Designing Your Go-To Friend Hangout Organizer

An App to Track Hangouts with Friends Keeping track of new restaurants and activities to do shouldn’t feel like navigating a cluttered mess on your notes app. Yet, that’s exactly the situation my friends and I were in - lost in a disorganized list within the Apple Notes app unable to really decide which place to try next. In order to transform this experience, I’m developing “WhereNow” - an app designed to bring order, excitement, and visual appeal to the experience of planning a hangout. I’ll walk through the journey of developing this project, starting with developing a MVP and selecting the right tech stack. We’ll then touch on modeling our tables to define a clear structure on how the app works. Alright, let’s get started. The Minimum Viable Product While there’s a lot of potential for incorporating advanced AI features, the initial goal is to quickly develop a product that my friends and I can use right away. This approach allows for quick feedback and iterative improvements. The core features of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) will include: User Authentication: Secure login and signup functionalities to manage user profiles Personal Lists: Ability to create and manage individual lists of places and activities Group Collaboration: Option to create shared lists with friends within specific groups Review System: Functionality to add reviews for list items and view reviews from group members AI-Powered Summaries: AI-generated summaries of list items to assist in decision-making and offer a more playful experience The aim is to quickly launch a usable product, gather user feedback, and make improvements - adding features once these core functionality are nailed down. Tech Stack Selection WhereNow will initially launch as a browser application. While developing a mobile app makes the most sense, my expertise lies in building web products. This approach allows me to: Rapidly create an MVP with my existing skills Assess user interest in the product To ensure a secure and efficient development process, I have chosen the following technologies: Supabase: Provides backend services and a SQL database, including authentication and simplified database table creation Next.js: Enhances frontend performance with features like lazy-loaded images and server-side rendering. Will allow the development of a dynamic product landing page with Framer Motion animations Clerk (Optional): Offers an affordable authentication services with quick integration options (Google, Twitter, etc.) Claude AI: An advanced AI language model known for its safety and performance Modeling Tables Designing the database schema is important for ensuring efficient data manipulation and providing insight into the apps functionality. Below is an overview of the proposed tables for WhereNow: Table Name: users Description: Stores info about registered users Fields: id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each user name (Required): name or nickname of the user email (Unique, Required): Email address of the user Table Name: groups Description: Stores information about user groups. Fields: id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each group name (Required): Name of the group. Table Name: group_members Description: Associates users with groups, establishing a many-to-many relationship Fields: user_id ((Foreign Key to users.id, Required) group_id (Foreign Key to groups.id, Required) Table Name: lists Description: Stores lists that users create for themselves or for their groups Fields: id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each list name (Required) user_id (Foreign Key to users.id, Required) group_id (Foreign Key to groups.id, Required) Table Name: list_items Description: Stores items within created lists Fields: id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each item list_id (Foreign Key to lists.id, Required) name (Required): Name or title of the item. city (Optional): City where the item (e.g., restaurant) is located. completed (Boolean, Default: false, Required): Status indicating if the item has been visited or completed Table Name: reviews Description: Stores user reviews for list items. Fields: id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each review list_item_id (Foreign Key to list_items.id, Required) user_id (Foreign Key to users.id, Required): Identifier linking to the reviewer rating (Integer, Required): Rating given to the item (e.g., 1-5 stars). - comment (Text): Optional textual feedback Table Relationships Tables Relationship Reason users ↔ groups many:many Users can be part of many groups. Groups can contain many users users → lists one:many Each list can only have one “creator” groups → lists one:many Groups can have many lists, but each list must be associated

Mar 8, 2025 - 20:04

Designing Your Go-To Friend Hangout Organizer

An App to Track Hangouts with Friends

Keeping track of new restaurants and activities to do shouldn’t feel like navigating a cluttered mess on your notes app. Yet, that’s exactly the situation my friends and I were in - lost in a disorganized list within the Apple Notes app unable to really decide which place to try next. In order to transform this experience, I’m developing “WhereNow” - an app designed to bring order, excitement, and visual appeal to the experience of planning a hangout.

I’ll walk through the journey of developing this project, starting with developing a MVP and selecting the right tech stack. We’ll then touch on modeling our tables to define a clear structure on how the app works.

Alright, let’s get started.

The Minimum Viable Product

While there’s a lot of potential for incorporating advanced AI features, the initial goal is to quickly develop a product that my friends and I can use right away. This approach allows for quick feedback and iterative improvements. The core features of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) will include:

User Authentication: Secure login and signup functionalities to manage user profiles
Personal Lists: Ability to create and manage individual lists of places and activities
Group Collaboration: Option to create shared lists with friends within specific groups
Review System: Functionality to add reviews for list items and view reviews from group members
AI-Powered Summaries: AI-generated summaries of list items to assist in decision-making and offer a more playful experience

The aim is to quickly launch a usable product, gather user feedback, and make improvements - adding features once these core functionality are nailed down.

Tech Stack Selection

WhereNow will initially launch as a browser application. While developing a mobile app makes the most sense, my expertise lies in building web products. This approach allows me to:

Rapidly create an MVP with my existing skills
Assess user interest in the product

To ensure a secure and efficient development process, I have chosen the following technologies:

Supabase: Provides backend services and a SQL database, including authentication and simplified database table creation
Next.js: Enhances frontend performance with features like lazy-loaded images and server-side rendering.
- Will allow the development of a dynamic product landing page with Framer Motion animations
Clerk (Optional): Offers an affordable authentication services with quick integration options (Google, Twitter, etc.)
Claude AI: An advanced AI language model known for its safety and performance

Modeling Tables

Designing the database schema is important for ensuring efficient data manipulation and providing insight into the apps functionality. Below is an overview of the proposed tables for WhereNow:

Table Name: users

Description: Stores info about registered users

Fields:

id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each user
name (Required): name or nickname of the user
email (Unique, Required): Email address of the user

Table Name: groups

Description: Stores information about user groups.

Fields:

id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each group
name (Required): Name of the group.

Table Name: group_members

Description: Associates users with groups, establishing a many-to-many relationship

Fields:

user_id ((Foreign Key to users.id, Required)
group_id (Foreign Key to groups.id, Required)

Table Name: lists

Description: Stores lists that users create for themselves or for their groups

Fields:

id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each list
name (Required)
user_id (Foreign Key to users.id, Required)
group_id (Foreign Key to groups.id, Required)

Table Name: list_items

Description: Stores items within created lists

Fields:

id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each item
list_id (Foreign Key to lists.id, Required)
name (Required): Name or title of the item.
city (Optional): City where the item (e.g., restaurant) is located.
completed (Boolean, Default: false, Required): Status indicating if the item has been visited or completed

Table Name: reviews

Description: Stores user reviews for list items.

Fields:

id (Primary Key, Required): Unique identifier for each review
list_item_id (Foreign Key to list_items.id, Required)
user_id (Foreign Key to users.id, Required): Identifier linking to the reviewer
rating (Integer, Required): Rating given to the item (e.g., 1-5 stars).

- `comment` (Text): Optional textual feedback

Table Relationships

Tables	Relationship	Reason
users ↔ groups	many:many	Users can be part of many groups. Groups can contain many users
users → lists	one:many	Each list can only have one “creator”
groups → lists	one:many	Groups can have many lists, but each list must be associated with one group only
lists → list_items	one:many	List Items are associated with one list
list_items → reviews	one:many	Reviews are associated with one list item, but list items can have multiple reviews
user → reviews	one:many	Reviews are associated to only one user

Conclusion

With the project's foundation established and the backend implemented on Supabase, we can turn our attention to designing the product's user interface. The design will significantly influence the frontend development, so let's dive into Figma to brainstorm!

Thoughts or suggestions? Please comment down below! Your feedback is invaluable to making WhereNow a tool that meets your needs.

(WhereNow Log 1)