Homiez: Bringing Local Communities Closer
Abstract
Homiez is a pioneering social networking app dedicated to strengthening the bonds within local communities. By facilitating the organization of events like BBQs and running clubs, and creating groups for active members, Homiez aims to enhance local engagement and cultivate a sense of belonging and community. Additionally, the app serves as a vital information hub, broadcasting alerts and updates on local happenings such as garage sales or safety warnings (e.g., potholes in local streets). Moreover, with its unique “friending” feature, Homiez matches community members based on shared interests, fostering meaningful connections and ensuring everyone feels right at home. At its core, this feature uses a complex matching algorithm that considers various user preferences and activities to suggest potential friends. This algorithm is the digital equivalent of a community matchmaker, ensuring that users are connected with others who share similar interests, hobbies, and even community concerns.
Author
Name: Lorenzo Policar
Student Number: 46983820
Functionality
Homiez is designed to serve as the digital hub of local communities, offering a suite of features that cater to the diverse interests and needs of its users. Its functionalities include:
- Event Organisation: Users can create, discover, and join local events, ranging from casual gatherings to structured clubs.
- Event Creation: Users can effortlessly create events with a simple interface, categorize them, set privacy levels, and share essential resources.
- Event Discovery: The app offers personalized event recommendations, robust search and filter options, and an interactive community calendar for easy planning.
- Engagement and Participation: Features include RSVP and attendance tracking, real-time updates for attendees, and post-event feedback mechanisms.
- Interest Groups: Specialized forums for users to connect over shared hobbies or concerns, encouraging active participation.
- Local Updates: Real-time notifications about community alerts, sales, and other local news, keeping everyone informed and engaged.
- Compatibility-Based Networking: A smart matching algorithm connects users with similar interests, based on inputted details of a questionnaire. This facilitates genuine friendships and support networks.
- Interest Profiles & Activity-Based Suggestions: Users craft profiles highlighting their interests and activities, which the app uses for personalized friend suggestions and event suggestions.
- Compatibility Scoring & Recommendations: Compatibility scores guide the app’s friend recommendations, focusing on shared interests and event participation. Compatibility scores and shared interests are displayed to the user.
- Privacy, Control, & Introductions: Users control their privacy and how they’re matched, with mechanisms for easy introductions based on shared interests.
- Interactive Map: A localized map displaying ongoing events and alerts, offering a visual guide to the community’s pulse.
Scope
The MVP of Homiez focuses on establishing a robust platform for event organization and local alerts, ensuring:
- Users can easily create, browse, and RSVP to events.
- Immediate push notifications for local alerts and events based on user preferences.
- Basic friending functionality with interest-based matching to encourage community bonding. This includes a questionnaire for the user to fill in.
Quality Attributes
- Scalability: Homiez is designed to efficiently handle increasing loads, ensuring seamless performance as the user base grows without degradation in performance. This involves optimizing backend infrastructure to manage growing data volumes and user traffic efficiently, and to dynamically allocate resources and adjust them based on demand. This is critical for supporting large community events and a growing network of users from a variety of communities.
- Reliability: Consistent, error-free operation is important, especially for time-sensitive features such as event notifications and emergency alerts. Homiez aims for high uptime and quick recovery from any failures. This attribute requires robust error handling, automated backup systems, and contingency plans to minimize downtime.
- Interoperability: This ensures Homiez can easily exchange and make use of information across different systems and services, such as local emergency services, mapping software, and social media platforms. This capability enables users to receive comprehensive local updates, share event details across platforms, and enhance the overall utility of the app within the community ecosystem.
Evaluation
To assess whether Homiez meets its quality objectives, the following evaluation methods will be employed:
- User Surveys and Feedback: Collect insights on app performance, especially during large events, to gauge scalability and reliability.
- Performance Metrics: Monitor app response times and uptime statistics to evaluate scalability and reliability under various loads.
- Focus Groups: Conduct discussions with users to understand the effectiveness of the matching algorithm and the overall community engagement, providing qualitative insights into the app’s impact.