Thesis

Thesis was an iteration of software idea I was exceedingly passionate about in my first years at university. The fundamental principle was simple enough: build an alternative to Tinder that wouldn’t allow people to judge one another based on their appearance or even their name, one that would also encourage face-to-face communication as soon as possible. The idea was a reaction to two sad realities I observed on my college campus: people spent too much time on their phones, and people tended to hang out around people they had a lot in common with despite an overwhelming amount of diversity.

I quickly realized that such a project seemed like too much to ask for, and had doubts about the coherence of trying to use the internet to get people off the internet. But it seemed as though a location-based platform that offered students the opportunity to talk with their classmates about something intellectual would have at least some amount of appeal.

Thesis was a completed as a final project for a web engineering class, with help from my friends Teddy and Gil. We built the front end using Angular and the Google Maps API and the back end using NodeJS and MongoDB. The final project was very much a prototype, and the process of building the app helped me realize how much more energy would need to go into the design of a platform that would be attractive enough to actually be usable.