hliejun's Portfolio

TECHNOLOGY

BUILD

React Native

ReactJS

Redux

socket.io

Express

SQLite

TOOLS

ESLint

NPM

Marvel

Photoshop

PLATFORMS

Nginx

Amazon EC2

Android

iOS

ABOUT

DESCRIPTION

Started out as a chat application for students in need of counselling, Bubble became an application for students to chat, brainstorm and rant anonymously. It is a mobile chat application that is implemented in React Native. It also has a web interface built with React for web users to access chat groups.

MOTIVATION

With Bubble, we aimed to learn about the entire flow of building an application, from implementing a minimum viable product, to marketing the product, user acquistion, engagement and management. Bubble was also a platform for students to experiment with anonymity in chat applications and to become aware of the pros and cons of this anonymity, in the safety net of an educational institution and a testbed module.

CHALLENGES

The greatest challenge in this project was to manage anonymity in a chat. From ensuring data privacy to meeting the requirements of the application markets, we learnt the complexities involved in publishing an anonymous chat application, such as the need for a flagging and reporting system and terms of use that polices the anonymity. While we lack the time and resources to provide these facilities and eventually failed to publish on the iOS App Store, we did succeed in releasing on Play Store and web in the module term.

FEATURES

ANONYMITY

Chat anonymously with strangers in topical chat rooms. No sign-in or registration is required. Pseudo-identity are persisted through socket sessions, cache and Redux store.

REAL-TIME

Chats are fired in real-time through socket events along with mobile application notifications. There is also an option to turn off notifications for individual rooms.

CATEGORY TAGGING

Chat rooms can be labelled or tagged with categorised tags. These tags are colour-coded and can be used to filter conversations.

SEARCH & FILTER

You can search for rooms by room title, or filter them by their tagged categories.

TEAM

Michelle Tan Michelle was responsible for UI/UX design, React Native application, marketing designs and content creation.

Ng Zhi An Zhi An handled the backend Express application, database, socket events and DevOps.

Nicholette Li Nicholette worked on the web chat interface, content creation and marketing.

Huang Lie Jun I wrote the React Native application with Michelle, socket client for front-end and Redux stores.

REFERENCES

React Native Documentation Official documentation and tutorials for React Native.

React Native with Redux Tutorial about using Redux with React Native on Alligator.io.

socket.io with React Native Tutorial about using socket.io with React Native for a chat application on Hackernoon.

React Native Gifted Chat Fully featured React Native chat components by Farid Safi on GitHub.

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