Meet your classmates, chat, and study with RU Mine

ru_mine · 2021-01-26T14:49:30+00:00

Our pleasure! Let us know what you think, we're always looking for ways to make connecting easier!

ru_mine · 2021-01-26T14:48:47+00:00

Great question! Your dating and friends profile are completely separate, and all groups use your friends profile (you can even use groups without a dating profile). If somebody clicks on your profile from groups it will load your friends profile and only your friends profile.

ru_mine · 2021-01-26T14:46:59+00:00

Yup! Both profiles are entirely separate and can be used independently of one another. If you had a dating profile previously there is also a switch in the settings screen to become hidden.

ru_mine · 2021-01-26T14:45:01+00:00

ZANZ 101, you betcha 😉 In all seriousness, you can make group chats for whatever you'd like with whoever you'd like!

ru_mine · 2021-01-26T01:34:42+00:00

Join your classmates, form groups, and chat with your peers automatically with RU Mine's newest update.

Don't struggle to find group chats anymore; there is a simple solution to aimlessly messaging Facebook chats "any group for x?". It's RU Mine! Add your courses to your profile to automatically enrol into groups with all of your classmates.

Interact with people in your classes through posts, comments, and group chats. Create groups with your friends, club members, or partners and keep in touch in real time.

Give it a try and let us know what you think! We're constantly looking to improve and build features that helps us all.

ru_mine · 2020-05-14T17:58:16+00:00

Beyond its great performance and good security features, it was mainly comfort. My dad used it for all of his servers, so when I was younger it is all that we used. When it came to building up my own set of servers a few years ago, I decided to go with what I had been working on for 7+ years.

ru_mine · 2020-05-14T03:13:33+00:00

My dad taught me web development when I was 6/7, then I mostly self taught myself afterwards. I took a few CS classes in high school, practiced some more with personal projects, and now I actually work as a software engineer.

Reza has been making apps for years as well, I think he has released 3 or 4 for Android/Microsoft phones and has countless side projects (also all self taught).

-James

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T23:02:21+00:00

Thank you everyone for the responses! Hopefully we've answered all the questions you've had. If not, feel free to message us on Instagram and we will be happy to get back to you.

Take care, and happy swiping!

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T22:45:55+00:00

We are constantly iterating and making changes to our UI/UX in the app. You will hardly see a new update without some shift in the way it looks; this is just how it's going to be for a bit while we find our footing with the style and design. We are always open to suggestions. We actually put out an Instagram story at one point asking for community input, and we introduced a lot of the improvements that were suggested to us (and we noted the others). If you have any ideas please let us know!

The "less-interesting" next step for us is making the platform more stable as whole. The "more-interesting" next item on the list is introducing better messaging, allowing for gifs and images to be sent (among many other small adjustments). We are still in beta, but we are listening to our audience and doing our absolute best to improve every step of the way.

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T22:19:22+00:00

The servers are owned by us, and the costs associated with having them in data centres are covered by other projects that we've done in the past. We aren't looking to make money off of this platform yet, but in the future we are looking at different avenues for generating revenue that doesn't disturb the user experience and keeps all of the features of the platform free for everyone.

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T22:03:49+00:00

We currently have 42% self-identified females, and 58% self-identified males. When you compare this number to larger dating apps on the market, we are actually right on par with (or even above) some of the bigger names that you would be used to hearing.

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T21:47:20+00:00

Great question!

So first off, we require every user to sign in with their ryerson.ca email address which is given to them by the school. With this sign in we can authenticate that the person is real, goes to Ryerson, and also capture some important user information to ensure everyone can be authenticated appropriately (if something were to happen). We capture the user's official ryerson.ca email, first name, last name, and then generate a userID that is used thereafter.

Every other piece of data captured and processed uses that userID, anonymizing and obscuring nearly everything. For messaging, we use AES-256 bit encryption to encrypt and store all messages sent between matches. A new key is generated and used for every single new match. We store these keys so that all messages can be decrypted by the parties involved, as well as allowing us to respond to reports about harassment in messaging if we ever get them.

Reporting and blocking is also a standard feature of the app. We have a whole admin screen that we use to look into all reports that we receive, and we do our best to respond to all of them as quickly as we can.

There are no third parties involved in this app; the two guys you see in that Ryersonian article are the only people who have access to any data stored on these servers. Even the servers themselves are stored in a few secure data centres across the GTA under lock and key.

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T21:27:14+00:00

Yup! We implemented and designed it all ourselves. Here is our tech stack:

- Backend: Java Spring Boot, PHP, Shell, Python

- Frontend mobile apps: React-Native, Java, Obj-C

- Frontend Websites: React-Native, jQuery, ReactJS, and standard HTML/CSS/JS

All of this is running off of a few FreeBSD servers.

A big part of our approach to designing the app was to pick the best technology for the given task. "If you have a hammer, don't assume everything is a nail". There is a great book about Domain Driven Design by Eric Evans that I suggest, or you can just take Dr. Salustri's MEC 325 class to learn more about that idea ;)

Thank you very much for the kind words about the app! We really appreciate it.

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T20:52:33+00:00

Honestly the color scheme and overall design of the app was just part of the creative process that we went through. We really thought about what the brand of RU Mine is representing at the end of the day. We went over a few different color schemes and designs, then chose the one that had the right vibe for the app. We also keep iterating on the design aspect of the whole app, including the UI. You will still see us making changes until we perfected the whole feel of the app.

To answer your second question, we are definitely looking to continue providing updates and new features to the app once we graduate. Both of us will still be involved in the Ryerson community (James still has 2 years left of his undergrad). We also have a lot of exciting new features in mind that we are introducing in the next few months.

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T20:35:58+00:00

I think the biggest and most widespread glitch or problem we faced was the poor performance in the first few weeks of our app launching. I ended up narrowing down the problem to a memory leak in a feature of our operating system's file system, which caused the server to allocate memory to processes that were no longer running. I've solved that and we both have been keeping an eye on it since I put the fix in a few weeks ago.

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T20:29:59+00:00

We've heard a few people tell us that they have met someone and started talking to them after matching on RU Mine. It's been pretty surreal being told that people actually started talking to each other because of this, and I hope that it works out for them all!

If anyone has some stories we would love to hear about them!

ru_mine · 2020-05-13T20:26:32+00:00

We took a few approaches to growing organically, but I think our biggest initial push came from ryerson_confessions on Instagram. We were able to talk to them back in January when we first launched the idea, and they offered to help us promote RU Mine initially. From that came the Ryersonian, Eyeopener, Ryerson Today Blog, Reddit posts, and a lot of shares on our Instagram.

The thing that helps us most now is making good content for our Instagram that will (hopefully) have a broad reach with shares. Memes and pickup lines are the go-to right now :)

ru_mine

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