Celebrated on February 14, Valentine’s Day is a day where couples are celebrated, and single individuals are reminded of their singledom. A solution for people looking for a connection nowadays is downloading dating apps. A group of students in the Digital Media program have created a dating/friendship app named FriendlyFire that incorporates a forum feature for people who enjoy video games for a class project. The team members include designer Casandra Alvarez, marketer Jolina Garcia, designer Ariana Garcia-Fundora, developer Brandi Murray and content producer Mikayla Vendryes.
“This project was born from our group’s shared love of video games. We wanted to create an application that helps gamers grow their guilds or look for love,” Murray explains. “Sometimes, it’s hard to find people who want to play the same games as you, sometimes it’s hard just finding friends. FriendlyFire is here to make it easier for gamers to connect. We chose the name FriendlyFire because on this app we want you to hit on your friends! At this time, our application is in the early development phase. Our team has created a high-fidelity prototype of our application in Figma and is currently in the process of replicating our prototype in React.”
Vendryes also explains that their goal is to create a community to foster meaningful relationships for gaming enthusiasts. “Our app is not just about dating or making friends; it’s about building a community where gaming enthusiasts unite, discuss their favorite games, and find kindred spirits,” said Vendryes.
Garcia-Fundora said, “Many gamers have formed online connections with others on the games they play or through online gaming community forums. The goal was to translate these connections forged within the online gaming communities into a dating application for gamers. We created this environment by implementing gaming specific elements like allowing users to upload their gaming highlights, adding their favorite gaming genres, adding their favorite games, a forums section to allow users to connect with others through forum posts and join in on the community, and the ability to upload an avatar. This is an academic year long project that focused on the development of either a redesign of an existing app or website or a new app or website. During Fall 2023, we created our brands Strategy Guide, Visual Design Guide, Style Guide, Low-Fidelity prototype, and High-Fidelity prototype. This semester we are focusing on the front-end and back-end development of our application to bring our project to life.”
“Often when one of your main hobbies is heavily online based in can be hard to find local in person connections with people who also have similar hobbies, we wanted a platform that made it easier for people to connect on the subject of video games,” Garcia adds. “Aside from being a place for gamers to be able to meet, we wanted this app to be open to everyone, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. In our design we tried to be as inclusive as possible and give our users the freedom to identify as what they want as well as the option to not display certain parts of their identity as well. Our team hopes to make sure our app can be a positive platform where people can have good experiences meeting new people.”
Brandi Murray, Lead Developer
Ariana Garcia-Fundora, Designer
Jolina Garcia, Marketer
By Majdulina Hamed.
Published to Nicholson News on February 7th, 2024.
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