7 Things
Project Team
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Supervision |
Goal
Our goal was to provide an alternative dating-app for modern people who don't have time to actively look for potential partners. In our hectic and busy society, some either don't have the time or urge to date. Using Beacon technology we solved the issue by implementing a Bluetooth Low Energy scanner, that efficiently runs in the background and allows the user to passively look for potential matches.
Motivation
Seeing as how dating sites demand a lot of information, we wanted to make a more natural human-to-human interaction possible, one that doesn't rely on mass filtering but instead focuses on the actual meeting process. Our app provides an engaging no-go system to filter through potential unwanted attributes, for example smoking habits. These are our titular “7Things“, at maximum the user can only filter through 7 attributes, to make the meeting process as engaging as “real“ blind-dates, but still provide some way of sifting through matches.
Approach
At first we familiarized ourselves with Android programming, which was completely new to us. We spend the first week learning basic skills in app programming and developed a broad blueprint, for not only the design, but also our code architecture. Using the Github version control system, we split up the code-work into different groups. One big project was our MySQL database server, which handles our registration and PHP matching systems. The Beacon technology we used were the Onyxbeacons supported by the open-source AltBeacon library.
For the design, we followed Googles' Material Design guidelines using mainly vibrant shades of red contrasted by neutral white. Of course our logo and screens follow empirically proven criteria for an appealing look using techniques such as the golden ratio, amongst others.
Our finished app runs passively in the background and sends us a notification, when a matched person has been found. If both parties confirm a handshake, a scanning process starts that, like a radar, helps the users find each other. Afterwards the actual dating process is in the hands of the users.
Outlook
Currently our application requires external Beacons. Newer Android devices have build in chipsets, which allow for the emulation of Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons and can simply replace buying an accessory. In addition our matching process could also be branched out into not only dating, but also common interests or finding new friends.