Venture

Venture is a web application created to help students at U.H. Manoa find activities to do in Hawaii, and friends to do go on adventures with. We noticed that our fellow students at our school, especially the ones who are not originally from Hawaii, are not always aware of the possibilities that our beautiful island offers. Furthermore, U.H. students may want to participate in activities and try new things, but not have friends who are interested in doing those activities with them. College is the time to have fun, venture out, and make friends, and Venture’s purpose is to encourage U.H. students to meet new people who share the same passions, and explore our island with peers, and have fun!

Venture includes several simple yet effective features. It includes search pages for both friends and events, that include advanced search features that allow you to search by keyword, interests, common friends, common events, transportation, date, location, and cost. You can easily search for and add any friend or event. Venture also includes a dashboard for a quick and easy view of the events you are scheduled to go to, and your list of friends. Lastly, it allows you to regularly customize and update your profile, and even create your own events whenever you please.

I helped develop Venture with my group members for our final project for our ICS 314 Software Engineering class. This was the first web app I have ever contributed to, and the first app I have developed as a group using GitHub’s team development tools. This project helped us to pool all of the skills we acquired over the course of the entire semester, including Javascript, HTML and CSS, Meteor, and Git, and I think it was a great hands-on opportunity that helped me get a first-hand feel for what software engineering and web development is like!

My contributions to this project were in all areas, but one of my biggest areas of focus was the theme, layout and design of the site, which in my opinions is one of its nicest features as a whole. Using Semantic-UI, I incorporated many visually appealing features into the outdoors-y, island theme of the site, which I believe suits its purpose, such as large background images incorporated into the functionality of the site. I also did a lot of work on the templates for site components, such as cards, event forms, profile forms, and making sure each page properly displays the objects stored in the database.

I really enjoyed working on this project, and am proud of the outcome. I am hoping that Venture will be used by students at U.H. and that it is a Venture that will be continued even as this semester comes to a close.