Slug Mate

Overview

SlugMate is an Android roommate-matching app for UCSC students, built in a software engineering class as a team project. It helps students find compatible roommates through profiles, filters, swipes, and mutual matches.

Problem

Students often struggle to find compatible housing and roommates. There isn't a structured way to compare habits, preferences, or living situations, so most people end up scrolling Facebook groups and hoping for the best.

My Role

I worked mainly on the backend. This was my first real experience building software on a team: practicing Scrum, owning assigned backend tickets, working through pull requests, and learning how to build inside a shared codebase. I also served as Scrum Master during one sprint.

Backend / Systems Work

Set up Firebase Authentication for account creation, login, verified email flow, and session handling. Added UCSC email validation so accounts were tied to school emails. Built Firestore-backed user profile data covering profile fields, housing preferences, and active-search status. Implemented profile picture upload and storage with Cloudinary, then saved image URLs and thumbnails back to Firestore. Also worked on the messaging and conversation-history logic for matched users, including cursor-style pagination.

Product Logic

Built swipe validation so users couldn't swipe on themselves, blank users, or duplicate targets. Stored swipe and seen-profile records in Firestore and handled likes, mutual match detection, and active match records. Added filtering so students who were no longer actively searching wouldn't show up in browse results, and helped connect the backend logic into the roommate matching flow.

Team Process

A class team project run with Scrum. Sprint planning, task ownership, code reviews, and standups were part of the weekly rhythm. A lot of the learning came from coordinating backend work with frontend teammates and figuring out how to keep a shared codebase healthy across a quarter.

Outcome

A completed Android MVP for the course. More importantly, it gave me my first real team software experience and a hands-on foundation in Firebase, Cloudinary, backend feature ownership, and Scrum.