No more eating alone — Connect with fellow students over meals! Our app matches you with like-minded peers based on dining location and time. #The Problem Many students eat alone in dining halls at Penn State, even when they’d prefer to eat with a friend. Studies show that this behavior is a proven risk factor for a variety of mental and physical health problems, including depression and heart disease. There’s currently no solution for these students to easily connect with others, meaning they remain isolated and lonely.
Meet & Eat is an app that matches students with other students who are planning to eat at the same dining hall and time. We were inspired by our own experiences of feeling lonely and isolated in college during meal times. We wanted to create a solution that would help students connect with each other and make new friends over food. Using a simple, intuitive UI system enables students with similar interests who would have otherwise never crossed paths to share a meal and ideas.
We used Swift UI to develop an Apple iOS application, and integrated Firebase’s RESTful API to interface with our NoSQL backend database, which we hosted as a Firebase Realtime Database via Google Cloud. We use local algorithms to pair users based on location and time, and store user data in Firebase as JSON.
For two of our team members, this was their first time competing in a hackathon – they had to adjust to the fast-paced, high-energy environment of HackPSU. Another major challenge came when one of our team members left the group in the middle of our development process, but we re-assigned roles to account for this. We worked hard to fine-tune our UI and make it visually pleasing, but faced difficulties because only one of our team members had a device capable of running xCode. Additionally, we had to learn how to use new tools like Firebase to store and retrieve data.
We followed ADA and WCAG guidelines for designing accessible interfaces by implementing a structured content flow, large buttons and font size, proper color contrast, and additional padding and white space. We wanted to ensure that all students could take advantage of our app’s functionality regardless of ability or circumstances.
We are proud of creating an app that has the potential to improve the mental health and well-being of college students by reducing loneliness and fostering social connections. Since we followed ADA and WCAG accessibility guidelines, our app can be used by anyone. We are also proud of learning and deploying new technologies and skills in a short amount of time.
We learned how to use Firebase to create a cross-platform mobile app and how to work as a team under pressure and deadlines. Our team also learned a lot about UX/UI design and the workflows required to create fluid and beautiful interfaces.
We plan to add more features and functionalities to our app, such as allowing users to rate their friends, providing feedback and suggestions for improvement, and expanding the app to other campuses and communities.