JoinMe: An On-the-Spot Hangout Coordination Framework

Abstract

Technology has become increasingly integrated into life and society. It has eased the process of communicating, sharing knowledge, and bringing people together. With the omnipresence of technology and the constant ability to reach others, the process through which we communicate to plan hangouts has drastically improved over the years. However, different types of social coordination benefit from different processes. Planning on-the-spot hangouts is currently done in a similar manner to planning future hangouts. This thesis proposes and implements a framework that is designed specifically for on-the-spot hangout coordination. This framework is implemented as a social media application, utilizing Expo, JavaScript, and Firebase. Evaluation of this application and underlying framework through manual, automated, and user testing demonstrates increased effi ciency of on-the-spot hangout coordination. Future work can build upon the proof-of-concept implementation of our framework to create a production application, analyze potential ways to widen the scope of this framework, and explore other coordination scenarios whose processes may be improved.