Two Trimester focus planning

For our site, we wanted to make a site similar to slack or discord without paywalls locking a majority of the available feature, especially customization. Here are all of the features we initially had planned

  1. Send messages in curated “place”s and channels
  2. Ability to send messages to an AI for any of the user’s needs
  3. Customization features such as text size, orientation, background color, text color… etc
  4. Create and customize your profile and send private messages to your friend

We hit on some of these however I feel like we couldve definetly worked a little harder on some of our features. Here is what we completed and what was excluded

  • Positive ~ Send messages in curated channels

  • Negative ~ Cant create a place yet, limited to one set of channels

  • Positive ~ Ability to send messages to an AI for any of the user’s needs

  • Negative ~ Slow process and limited to answers

  • Positive ~ Customzation features such as background color, text color, light/dark mode

  • Negative ~ Cant customize text sixe or orientation of messages/website

  • Negative ~ Cant create or customize accounts nor send private messages to your friends :P

These are some issues that we know we have but we plan on hitting on these in tri 2 and more!

  1. Ability to create “place”s and find public places available to join

  2. Ability to create an account

  3. Upload and save images to be able to send to your friends

  4. Add friends tab and ability to add friends

  5. Implement even more utility to our website through “plugins” (time for the collabs of the century)
    • Weather
    • Calendar
    • Schedule
    • Games
    • Music

    • Maps

    • Teaching Utilities
    • Barcodes
    • Image AI Generation
    • Github Issues
  6. Higher admin permissions
    • Teacher, Counselor, Principal, etc
    • Ability to change, timeout, ban members (from place)
    • Ability to edit place or channel informtion (if owner)
    • Ability for admins to implement plugins for various resources (hall passes, attendance, etc)
  7. Add a setting page with tabs such as profile and security for further customization (features below)
    • Visible Name
    • Update User Info
    • Profile Picture
    • 2fa
    • Blocked Accounts
    • Profanity Filter
    • Message Log
    • Website Orientation
    • Website Style

  8. Real time message updates

    Feedback

We got a lot of feedback and data from parents, students, and even teachers! Here are some of the most common things we heard and how we’ll tackle them!

  1. The screen flashes a lot and the messages arent real time!
    • We plan to tackle this by using SocketIo or IAM to create real itme updating. This works by listening to a server and getting a response whenever a change is made and it will dynamically update the page rather than forcefully refreshing every single time (thanks for the feedback Mr. Lopez)
  2. Can you create an account?
    • No, currently the ability to create an account isnt functional however this is something we hope to achieve whith the next rendition of Place and you’ll be able to make even more customization features such as setting a visible name and having your real name, profile pictures, and account security changes
  3. The website looks a bit bland, can you customize anything?

    • Yes, currently you can customize the background, text color, and dark/light mode for static parts of the website but we plan on adding a ton more custmization features and not just the frontend ones, the backend ones too!

      Team

I feel like as a team we achieved a lot and communicated but I do have my own comments to make:

  • Akshat
    • I feel like Akshat and I worked really well when we made the channels and message api. We worked on our parts individually then came together to make our part of the project which is what the goal of working this trimester was all about, creating our indiviual parts and coming together although I feel like some of our teammates didn’t put enough effort or didnt communicate as well as Akshat or I did.
  • Shreyas
    • I like that shreyas did make an attempt to work on his feature however we had to scrap it because of its complexity and because it was incomplete, eventually we are planning to bring back the friend messaging feature and use our new knowledge to even further advance it than it previously was
  • Shivansh
    • Shivansh was also a hard worker but he didnt really communicate well with the team or what he was done with/working on as well as his code wasn’t his original and made no efforts to change it
  • Mati
    • Mati didnt really complete his feature but did help with frontend aspects and did make an attempt with the part he wa supposed to complete

Reflection

Overall I feel like I myself achieved a higher understanding of Java as well as how important it is to work in a group and complete everything on time. Here are some pictures from N@TM that highlight my experience and some pictures from other art classes.