The problem Cirgle solves

Most social networks today aim to expand the reach to great extends yet miss to see the point that degree of involvement is low for beginners. Also, finding good collaboration partners can be challenging as everyone is at different levels of expertise. A sense of online loneliness and lack of clarity when there are dozens of resources can prove to be a major hurdle for several learners aiming to climb up the ladder.

In this regard, Cirgle proves to hold a unique place in the system by providing connections on the basis of (1) Geographical location (to encourage in-person meetings), (2) experience barrier (to avoid intimidating beginners by professionals work) and (3) technical interest (to find like-minded people).

On first time use, the user goes through a personality test to grade their experience level. He/She will then receive a social feed of the projects being done by those in the same city and will have an opportunity to collaborate together and increase their experience level. According to their level of knowledge, the application will encourage them to participate in workshops/events better suited for them. By avoiding early exposure to experts, we prevent the possibility of an inferior complex in the new learner.

The platform understands over time, the strengths and weaknesses of each user and tries to bridge the gap - if deemed necessary - by connecting the dots between opportunity and capability.

Challenges we ran into

We tried to implement our application using flutter. However, we came to realize that the learning curve was quite steep and thus considered instead of using PWA (Progressive Web App) to build our system. As time was short we finally set for a simple Web-based interface to carry out the demonstration. It took us a couple of hours to set up the system for flutter thus the realization of incompetence to learn the same was quite hard to digest at first. Yet to avoid the sunk cost from hampering our progress, we had to move on to a web-based solution.