UCalgary student developing app to help foster student friendships

Finding new friends on campus is about to get a lot easier, thanks to a new app developed by a University of Calgary student.

The idea for the app began with a simple observation from Rami Maalouf, a fourth-year computer science student in the Faculty of Science. He noticed every day in the campus dining hall, dozens of students would be sitting alone. He hypothesized that many of these students were sitting alone not because they wanted to, but because approaching someone new can be terrifying.

Curious to know if his assumptions were right, Maalouf approached a few students sitting alone to chat about their experiences. He also invited them to fill out short surveys. Many said they did want to be approached, but the friction they felt when trying to meet up with others often held them back.

“It reminded me of how I used to think in my first year,” Maalouf recalls. “When I first came here, I had no friends to talk to because I came from the other side of the world and didn’t know anyone.”

He wanted to approach people and make friends, but he didn’t know who to approach because he didn’t know if others wanted to be approached or if he would have anything in common with the other person.

“There’s so ‘many-ifs’ that stop you from approaching people,” Maalouf explains.

To make the process of meeting new people as easy as possible, Maalouf devised the Orbit app.

Students will be able to create meet-up postings where they can specify what activity they are looking to do (e.g. lunch, coffee, workout, walk, run) and what they’d like to talk about. Other users will then be able to click into those postings and see if the person looking to meet up has similar interests and ambitions. From there, the users can message each other back and forth and determine if they want to meet in-person.

Personalization is at the core of Orbit’s vision. The app plans to leverage the latest AI technology to tailor each user’s experience, helping students find the right people based on their values, goals, and mindsets, not just proximity or photos.

“The hope is to make the process very simple and frictionless because it’s the friction that’s stopping people from approaching and meeting new people,” says Maalouf, who will be returning to UCalgary in the fall to complete his degree and launch the app.

As with all social networking apps, Maalouf is aware that some people may want to use the app for reasons beyond its intended purpose. Right now, users can specify if they’re looking for friendship or for a relationship, and other things like mentorship may be added down the line.

Safety features have been built in, with a one-click method to block and report a user at every step in the app, should they exhibit any inappropriate behaviour.

In addition, the codebase is open sourced for transparency amongst the user base who may have concerns about privacy and data sharing from experiences with other social networking apps. This also allows others to join the community building the app.

The app has been a passion project for Maalouf, who has put 280 hours into the coding of the app, and several hours more interviewing people and researching similar apps.

A fall launch of the app will allow a new crop of first-year students to be users, and for Maalouf to observe how they use the app and what improvements can be made.

This is just the latest endeavor by Maalouf to bring more joy and connection to student life. On his YouTube channel, he’s shared videos where he takes on dares given to him by students he approached in Mac Hall, donating money to charity for each one he completed. Follow-up videos having him flipping the script; giving dares to students in Mac Hall and gently nudging them to take uncomfortable actions themselves — with each completed dare triggering another donation to charity.

“Everything that I’m doing is to help inspire students to make the best of their university experience,” Maalouf says.

Having struggled with shyness and social anxiety in high school, Maalouf made it a personal mission to change during university, not just for himself, but to set an example for others. Over the past few years, he’s leaned into discomfort and now believes that’s exactly what helped him grow.

“In my opinion, doing these uncomfortable things is how you discover and unlock your fullest potential,” Maalouf says.

“I want to help inspire other people to achieve that.”