## Inspiration

I have a hard time opening up to people. As much as I want to talk about my problems with my friends, something about showing vulnerability just really scares me, but I think deep down everybody wants to feel heard and valued. The times I've felt most comfortable sharing my thoughts with people are almost always when they share their's first, and I really believe there's something about reciprocity that makes the vulnerability much more approachable.

## What it does

Peach&Cream generates increasingly intimate questions to help guide people through meaningful conversations. This increase is determined in two ways: the number of questions answered, and the amount of time spent talking. Our initial goal was to build a tool that would help two people fall in love, almost like a modern version of Arthur Aron's 36 Questions. However, after trying it out ourselves, we quickly realized that Peach&Cream can be used for so much more than just romantic connection. Whether it's strangers meeting for the first time or old friends catching up, insightful questions help foster bonds that simply cannot be replicated any other way.

## How we built it

Everything was built using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. We first researched questions and sorted them into arrays, with each array increasing in "depth" and "meaning". We then built a timer to account for the amount of time elapsed, using that information to output questions ensuring the conversation would progress at a reasonable pace, while still giving the users ample time to comfortably ease into deeper topics.

Finally, we wireframed some layouts for the UI on Figma and used CSS grid to make the site responsive.

## Challenges we ran into

Since both of us have never really built anything before, everything was quite a bit of a challenge. Particularly, we wanted to implement animations into the transition between questions. However, the animations would only happen when we reloaded the page, and not when we were changing the questions with javascript. We ended up figuring out a workaround using DOM manipulation to change the class tag on the "question" element every time the "next" button was clicked.

Another huge challenge for us was learning how to use github. We felt like it was important to learn, but we ended up spending 4+ hours trying to get everything set up and understanding all the git commands.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're both incredibly happy with what we were able to make this weekend. To be completely honest, we weren't expecting to actually build much of anything at all, since neither of us has actually coded anything on our own before. I'm excited to actually use this tool with my friends, and knowing I can just go in and tweak everything to my own liking just feels so powerful.

## What we learned

* Wireframing
* CSS Grid
* CSS Transitions
* Responsive web design
* Importing fonts from Google
* Git commands
* DOM Manipulation
* About each other

## What's next for peaches&cream

* Although this initial version of peaches&cream is aimed towards romantic interactions, the same concept can be used for normal conversations as long as we tweak a few of the questions. Our next steps are to add a screen where you can choose different scenarios to tune the questions to your needs.
* Elements aren't behaving the same way on FireFox and Chrome, so we definitely need to fix that.
* Our question bank can use some more variety and volume, there's a lot of room to be more quantitative with the types of questions we have.
## Inspiration

Everyone in this team has previously been to post-secondary and noticed that their large group of friends have been slowly dwindling since graduation, especially after COVID. It's already well known that once you leave school it's a lot harder to make friends, so we got this idea to make FriendFinder to match you with people with similar hobbies in the same neighbourhood as you.

## What it does

**Find friends!**

When making an account on FriendFinder, you will be asked to input your hobbies, whether you prefer chatting or hanging out, whether you enjoy outdoor activities or not, and your neighbourhood. It then gives other users a relative score based on your profile, with more matching hobbies and preferences having a higher score. Now when ever you log in, the front page will show you a list of people near you with the highest score, allowing you to send them friend requests to start a chat.

## How we built it

**With friends!**

We used HTML, CSS, and Javascript for the frontend and Firebase and Firestore for the backend.

## Challenges we ran into

**Our friends...**

Just kidding. One of the biggest challenges we faced was the short amount of time (24 hours) of this hackathon. Being first year students, we made a project of similar scale in school but over 4 months! Another challenge was that none of us knew how to implement a real time chat app into our project. At first we wanted to learn a new language React and make the chat app beautiful, but due to time constraints, we researched a simpler way to do it just to give it base functionality.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

**Our friendship survived!**

After the initial scramble to figure out what we were doing, we managed to get a minimum viable product in 24 hours. We are really proud that we incorporated our knowledge from school and learned something new and integrated it together without any major issues.

## What we learned

**Make good friends**

The most important thing we learned is that team work is one of the most important things needed for a good development team. Being able to communicate with your team and dividing work up by each team member's strengths is what made it possible to finish this project within the strict time limit. The hackathon was a really fun experience and we're really glad that we could form a team together.

## What's next for FriendFinder

**More features to find more friends better**

* beautify the app
* add friend / pending friend requests feature
* security/encryption of messages
* report user function
* more detailed hobby selection list for better matching
* update user's profile / hobby selection list at any time
* let users add photos
* group chat function
* rewrite sections of code to become more efficient
## Inspiration

Learning never ends. It's the cornerstone of societal progress and personal growth. It helps us make better decisions, fosters further critical thinking, and facilitates our contribution to the collective wisdom of humanity. Learning transcends the purpose of solely acquiring knowledge.

## What it does

Understanding the importance of learning, we wanted to build something that can make learning more convenient for anyone and everyone. Being students in college, we often find ourselves meticulously surfing the internet in hopes of relearning lectures/content that was difficult. Although we can do this, spending half an hour to sometimes multiple hours is simply not the most efficient use of time, and we often leave our computers more confused than how we were when we started.

## How we built it

A typical scenario goes something like this: you begin a Google search for something you want to learn about or were confused by. As soon as you press search, you are confronted with hundreds of links to different websites, videos, articles, news, images, you name it! But having such a vast quantity of information thrown at you isn’t ideal for learning. What ends up happening is that you spend hours surfing through different articles and watching different videos, all while trying to piece together bits and pieces of what you understood from each source into one cohesive generalization of knowledge. What if learning could be made easier by optimizing search? What if you could get a guided learning experience to help you self-learn?

That was the motivation behind Bloom. We wanted to leverage generative AI to optimize search specifically for learning purposes. We asked ourselves and others, what helps them learn? By using feedback and integrating it into our idea, we were able to create a platform that can teach you a new concept in a concise, understandable manner, with a test for knowledge as well as access to the most relevant articles and videos, thus enabling us to cover all types of learners. Bloom is helping make education more accessible to anyone who is looking to learn about anything.

## Challenges we ran into

We faced many challenges when it came to merging our frontend and backend code successfully. At first, there were many merge conflicts in the editor but we were able to find a workaround/solution. This was also our first time experimenting with LangChain.js so we had problems with the initial setup and had to learn their wide array of use cases.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of/What's next for Bloom

We are proud of Bloom as a service. We see just how valuable it can be in the real world. It is important that society understands that learning transcends the classroom. It is a continuous, evolving process that we must keep up with. With Bloom, our service to humanity is to make the process of learning more streamlined and convenient for our users. After all, learning is what allows humanity to progress. We hope to continue to optimize our search results, maximizing the convenience we bring to our users.