Aisyah-Rafli Take the World Stage

The excitement is palpable for Huda Aisyah Khoirunnisa and Muhammad Rafli Silehu, students of Informatics Engineering Education (PTI) and Informatics at Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS). Their UpMate app has successfully secured a spot among The Global Top 100 Teams in the Google Solutions Challenge (GSC) 2024.

Elaborating the tagline “Connecting people with the same academic interest” Aisyah explained that UpMate is a networking media application designed for students with similar interests or academic topics, It serves as a platform for gathering individuals who wish to learn together and engage in discussions.

UpMate addresses the educational challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, which compelled students to adapt to remote learning. Unfortunately, the distance learning programs introduced during that time resulted in learning loss, leading to a decline in competence and knowledge among students.

“During the pandemic, the constraints of distance left students with few peers to discuss academic matters with,” explained Aisyah during a Zoom Meeting on Wednesday (24/04/2024).

UpMate is now available on the Google Play Store and can be downloaded on various Android-based devices. Its usage is straightforward: upon opening the app for the first time, users are prompted to input their UpMate account email and password. If they don’t have an account yet, they can easily register by clicking the register button and providing their personal information.

Aisyah mentioned that her inspiration for UpMate came from the Line OpenChat app, which gained popularity in 2021. Drawing from this concept, Aisyah assembled a team and developed UpMate utilizing Google technologies such as Flutter, Firebase, Tensorflow, and Google Cloud.

The UpMate app boasts various exciting features that promise a memorable experience for its users. Aisyah detailed some of these features:

• Interest tag recommendation

    This feature allows users to input specific topics of interest. 

• Recommendation for person, event, course, information (PECI)

    The PECI feature make it easier for users to follow a person, event, course, or important information related to their favorite topics. 

• Realtime chat

    This feature allows users to chat and discuss users’ interested topic

• Share a post

    Users can also share interests and ideas through the share-a-post feature. Features such as like, comment and save allow interaction with     other users. 

• Bad word detector

    The UpMate app also has a hate speech detection tool. Words that are rude, dirty, and disrespectful will be automatically censored.

• Spam detector

    UpMate also has a spam detection device that will make users more comfortable browsing in this app.

• Explore anything related to your interest

    Users can explore more topics of interest.

“UpMate offers numerous benefits, particularly addressing the anxiety students experience with distance learning. With its array of features, we confidently assure the safety and comfort of our users,” explained the final year student. “Educational applications must prioritize user safety and comfort.”

The beginning of 2024 marked a significant opportunity for Aisyah and Rafli to pursue global recognition. As students of PTI UMS, the duo registered their UpMate app in the Google Solution Challenge 2024.

The Google Solution Challenge, initiated by the Google Developer Student Club (GDSC), aims to develop solutions addressing local issues using Google technology, aligning with one or more of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“This marks our debut in the GSC 2024. It’s our first time participating in this competition, and one of the prerequisites is being a member of GDSC,” noted Aisyah, the team’s initiator. Aisyah played a pivotal role in establishing GDSC at UMS the previous year.

UpMate distinguished itself from thousands of other teams in this year’s GSC by focusing on the fourth SDGs: quality education. “We made it to the Top Global 100 Teams and advanced as finalists for the next round. The selection process will be conducted in stages,” shared Aisyah, who also serves as the head of GDSC UMS.

Their success in the GSC 2024 earned Aisyah and Rafli a mentoring opportunity in mobile development, provided entirely by Google. This mentoring program aims to prepare all participants for the subsequent rounds of the competition.

“The mentoring primarily focuses on maintaining source code in mobile app development. After mentoring, participants will undergo further selection rounds to determine the top ten, top three, and ultimately, the winner,” Aisyah elaborated.

The UpMate team is dedicated to enhancing the application’s functionality and user experience through ongoing updates. Rafli emphasized the need for improvements in various aspects, including adding a video call feature and improving the programming language to ensure smoother browsing within the app.

“Our strategy to reach the Top 10 involves incorporating a video call feature and implementing suggestions from mentors to enhance the code’s maintainability and testability,” explained Rafli, a student from Jayapura, Papua.

Similarly, Aisyah highlighted plans to refine the recommendation system, aiming to leverage Google’s technology to develop more advanced content recommendations within the app.

“UpMate has received government funding since the beginning, so it’s essential to continue its development. We’re committed to maximizing the use of Google’s technology,” stated Aisyah, a student from Wonogiri.

Challenges arise, particularly with the profane word detector feature, as offenders often use various combinations of numbers or letters to circumvent detection. Aisyah and her team are actively working on improving this feature to detect a wider range of hate speech and profanity.

“We’ve developed our own dictionary for the profanity list and have been able to detect several types of profanity combinations. However, there’s room for further development, especially considering the complexity of the Indonesian language in detecting profanity. We’re continuously improvising to address this challenge,” Aisyah elaborated.

Writr: Gede Arga Adrian

Editor: Al Habiib Josy Asheva

Translator: Farizal Luqman Majid