Bulletin

Background

It's fun to leave notes like this:

But what its 2017 so we're livin' like this:

Enter Bulletin.

Now you can leave your friends surprise messages at all the places you know they'll go.

Bulletin is a mobile app that allows users to drop notes at a location for their followers to see when they're there. Imagine walking into a boring old grocery store and getting a surprise note from your pal.

Users will also be able to post notes to a 'discover' board and 'followers' board based on their current location. Bars, restaurants, parks, etc. You can drop a note anywhere.

Bulletin was made by Monte Jiran, Grey Keith, Nathan Li, and Eric Windmill

Features

• Users accounts have secure token authentication, so they only have to sign in once (per device)
• Users can drop notes to their followers - they can select one or multiple followers per note.
• App integrates with native camera so that users can send images as notes.
• Users get notified when they have unread notes at a given location.
• Users can follow other users and see their posts.
• Locations have public boards
• Users can post to a location based followers feed OR a location based public feed.
• The app uses native geolocation in parallel with Google Places and Apple Maps.
• "Treasure Hunt Map" (Users can see where they have messages, but not from who or the messages content.)

Product Design

Bulletin was rapidly built from conception in 8 days. The design and workflow was guided by our app proposal. This proposal included database schema, sample state for React/Redux, wireframes, and implementation timeline.

Technology

One of the greatest challenges of this project was quickly learning new technologies.

Frontend Technology

• Javascript
• React Native
  • React flavored library made by Facebook. Allows us to create mobile apps for both iOS and Android with Javascript (which is incredible.)
  • Styled with ReactNative flavored CSS.
• Redux
  • The Redux cycle and library is implemented to organize and architect the frontend.
• Xcode project management
• AWS S3 file storage

Backend Technology

• Ruby on Rails with Heroku
  • The database was built with Ruby on Rails. The rails app is simply a location for our React Native app to make RESTful API calls to our database. The Rails app additionally handles user authentication.
• PostgreSQL

Backend Github

Additional

• AWS S3 file storage for images
• Jekyll for rapidly building demo page.
• Appetize.io to display a live demo on the demo page.

Future Implementations

• Users can like posts on the public and/or following board
• Users get like and follows notifications
• Users have a profile
• Hot activity places nearby
• Video notes