Inspiration
Our inspiration for this project came from analyzing the determent in physical interpersonal relationships despite a greatly more connected world. On top of this, recent events such as COVID-19 have led to more and more people becoming heavily isolated. This has led to a decline in relationship quality and overall happiness of some communities.
What it does
ProxNet is a network which establishes Hubs and allows users to connect to them to meet others physically. By using our web application, users can see Hubs nearby (using GPS location finding) and connect to them. They can also see all the other people connected to the Hub. This allows them to go and meet with others physically through these Hubs.
How we built it
In a general sense, we utilized GPS information to set the locations for Hubs and get coordinates of clients. Using this, we calculated an optimal radius that clients would be able to view different Hubs and see other people connected to the Hub. For the backend, we used the Flask API to connect the server database straight and add/remove Hubs and users connected. For the frontend, we used ReactJS for our javascript framework as well as Material UI, a css toolkit to make the website look clean, simple, and intuitive.
Challenges we ran into
The time constraint required to manage our time effectively and split up different sections of the project to maximize efficiency. In addition, we were a team of two, so as Dhruv worked on the frontend with ReactJS, I (Rishit) learned Flask from scratch and successfully implemented an effective backend solution.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We created a user-friendly website that successfully allows user to connect to Hubs, and view all other users connected to those Hubs. Every part of the project works seamlessly, and even though it was my (Rishit) first time learning Flask, I managed to implement a solution that worked perfectly. Also, as two people, we managed to work very efficiently to create a project that correctly solves a major problem we see related to social networking.
What we learned
We learned Flask, React JS, Material UI, and database management through web applications.
What's next for ProxNet
The project is greatly expandable, allowing numerous features added to increase the functionality based on groups, settings, etc. Examples of these could be focus groups within Hubs, grouping people based on what they are doing (established by the user). There are also many other features that we could add based on the logistics of different groups/companies in the future.
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