Find Your Language Buddy
Alona, Ana, Burak, and Yurii / June 6, 2024
Find Your Language Buddy in Switzerland Today — a full-stack web platform built in less than two weeks as the final project of a full-stack development course. Our team of four (Alona, Ana, Burak, and Yurii) collaborated to address a real-world problem affecting many newcomers in Switzerland.
🧩 The Problem
Refugees and migrants arriving in Switzerland often struggle with language barriers, making it difficult to integrate into society or secure employment. Lack of local language practice opportunities can delay their path to independence.
💡 The Solution
Our platform connects refugees and migrants with local volunteers who can help them practice language skills and introduce Swiss culture. Users can sign up as either a Learner or a Buddy, create profiles, and get matched based on language preferences.
🔧 Project Workflow
- 🧠 Initial Brainstorming: We considered several project ideas — a carpooling app, poll maker, refugee hub — and voted to focus on Language Learning Buddy.
- 🎯 Planning: Created a project plan in Miro, wireframes and design in Figma and Pixso, and tracked tasks using GitHub Projects.
- 🧑💻 Teamwork Tools: Slack, Zoom, Google Docs for collaboration.
- ⌨️ Development Flow:
- Week 1: Built first with HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Week 2: Then switched to React, Node.js, Express.js, PostgreSQL, authentication with JWT, and styling with Bulma
✨ Features
- User sign-up and login with JWT authentication
- Choose to be a language learner or a language buddy
- Profile creation and matching functionality
- Styled with Bulma CSS for a clean and responsive UI
- Connected to a PostgreSQL database
🔭 Future Improvements
- Add multiple profiles per user (e.g., speak one language, learn another)
- Expand the database with more detailed user preferences
- Email notifications when a match is found
- In-app messaging system
🌐 Collaboration
This project was built in just two weeks, and we worked in a fully remote setup:
- Team Members: Alona, Ana, Burak, Yurii
- Communication: Slack, Zoom
- Project Tracking: GitHub Projects
- Design & Planning: Pixso, Miro, Figma
💬 Reflections
This was an incredibly rewarding experience — both technically and personally. It showed the power of team coordination under tight deadlines, and how tech can be used to build empathy and community support systems. It also pushed me to level up my full-stack skills — from frontend layout to JWT auth and working with PostgreSQL!