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2023 Visions and Goals

2023 Visions and Goals

Owned by Franco Reyes
Last updated: Jan 30, 2023
2 min read

Visions

Product

  • Become the source of truth for when a room is free

    • Student A: “When’s this room gonna be free?” Student B: “Check Freerooms”

  • Cater to not only CSE students but also the wider UNSW community including students and staff

  • Optimise the user experience with a strong focus on mobile users

Team

  • Develop new and existing skills, explore new technologies and learn and grow as a team

  • Foster a welcoming and supporting environment where each member feels comfortable asking questions

  • Encourage pair programming so team members can better support each other and stay connected

Goals

Complete and Deploy v2 Frontend status:FRONTEND

What? There are just a few touch ups and features that need to be ported from the old frontend before we’re ready to deploy.

When? Term 1

Tasks:

  • Redesign the search/sort/filter bar

  • Improve the map functionality - dynamically load building markers, colour by availability (possibly rewrite using Google Maps API)

  • Port room timetable feature

  • Port “Room available in X minutes” feature

  • Replace V1 frontend with V2 on the main domain

Restructure Frontend status:FRONTEND

What? The v2 frontend was not designed to be very extensible, so some work needs to be done before we can start working on new features

When? Term 1

Tasks:

  • Use the new Next13 /app directory

  • Separate landing page, building list and map into distinct pages

  • Create a way to navigate between these pages (e.g. a navbar)

  • Lift the search bar into the navbar as a more global feature

  • Improve the landing page aesthetically and functionally (put some info)

Expand Data Scope status:BACKend

What? Currently we only support CATS rooms, and the only room bookings we display are classes. However, there’s much more out there.

When? Term 1

Tasks:

Room Browsing status:FRONTEND status:BACKEND

What? Ideally we can become a sort of room database, where people can look up rooms and see useful info such as location, room capacity, how to book etc.

When? Term 1/2

Tasks:

  • Pages for each building and room

  • Find out how to book each room

  • New backend endpoint to obtain this information

  • Photograph every room

Personalisation status:FRONTEND

What? Some small quality of life stuff to allow users to personalise their experience

When? Term 2

Tasks:

  • Dark mode

  • Compact/list view (as opposed to card view)

  • Favourite/pin certain buildings and rooms so you can easily access them

  • A settings page to accommodate all these options

User Involvement status:FRONTEND status:backend

What? Once Freerooms it released and advertised and we have a decently sized user base, we can start working on features that benefit from a lot of user involvement

When? Term 2

Tasks:

  • Integrate with the CSESoc authentication system

  • Allow users to report rooms as occupied

  • Encourage users to review/rate rooms on various factors

  • Encourage users to submit their own images of rooms and buildings

Mobile App status:APP

What? A mobile app version of Freerooms

When? 2023?

Tasks:

  • Discuss the requirements of the mobile app

  • Plan and design the look of the app

 

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