Intrigued by the thought of creating an online space for people to connect through common interests, a team of senior computer science and engineering students enrolled in a capstone design course pursued this passion to develop an app dedicated to just this purpose.
“We saw that a large part of the A&M student culture is formed around communities,” said Muin Momin. “Previous research and our initial findings showed that humans have a strong desire to belong in a community, and this is especially important in a university setting where mental health should be a priority. Studies have also shown that people are happier when they have more offline social interaction.”
Momin and his team members, Alishah Dholasaniya and Zackary Christie, hit the drawing board and came up with an idea to create a mobile application, GroupUp, to allow users to quickly find, create and join events around them and chat with fellow attendees.
“Once a user logs in, they are presented with a map that shows them all events that are happening around them,” Momin said. “They can then very easily filter through those events based on the category they are interested in like sports, social, food and education.”
“Once a user joins an event, they have the ability to chat with other members of the same event,” Christie said. “The chat can be useful for anything from asking about logistics of the event to just socializing with other members.”
The team built the application with simplicity in mind and focused on fast user experience and the ability to quickly find something the user is interested in and can jump into.
“What excites me most about GroupUp is its unique ability to cater to spontaneous, informal events that can be created by anyone,” Dholasaniya said. “These types of events are often overlooked by other event management systems, but are the focus of GroupUp.”
The application will be available via the app store at the end of the spring semester.
“Once our application has been widely adopted beyond Texas A&M, we want to conduct a study that will hopefully validate our work and show that people are happier when they are part of a community and have more offline social interactions,” Momin said. “We think GroupUp can help people with this.”
The team was advised by Dr. Tracy Hammond, professor in the department, as members of her senior capstone design course. They were recently awarded first place for their undergraduate oral presentation in the engineering category during the university-wide Student Research Week in March. In April, they also earned first place in the computer science and engineering capstone design competition at the annual Engineering Project Showcase.
“GroupUp will have an enormous impact on helping people find their place in a community and help them to connect with others through similar interests,” Dholasaniya said.