Manoa Lost & Found is a full-stack web application designed to help University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa students, faculty, and staff report and recover lost items on campus. The project addresses a real problem on campus by providing a centralized, searchable alternative to informal solutions such as group chats or social media posts.
The application allows users to authenticate with UH Single Sign-On, report lost or found items, browse recent submissions, and filter items by category and location. The interface is designed to be clean, mobile-friendly, and consistent with UH branding so it feels familiar and trustworthy to campus users.
My contributions focused on both frontend development and software engineering practices. On the frontend, I built and refined major pages such as the landing page, item feed, and reporting forms using Next.js and React. I implemented reusable UI components with Bootstrap and custom CSS to maintain visual consistency and accessibility. I also helped integrate authentication so only logged-in users could submit or manage items.
On the backend, I contributed to designing the Prisma database schema, managing migrations, and ensuring data was stored and retrieved reliably. Beyond feature development, I played an active role in applying Issue-Driven Project Management, using GitHub issues, feature branches, and pull requests to coordinate work. Incremental commits and frequent deployments to Vercel helped prevent breaking changes and made collaboration more efficient.
This project taught me that software engineering extends far beyond writing code. I gained experience balancing new features with technical debt, coordinating work within a team, and thinking about long-term maintainability. The project reinforced the importance of configuration management, deployment testing, and designing software for real users rather than just satisfying assignment requirements.
Overall, Manoa Lost & Found helped bridge the gap between classroom exercises and real-world software development by giving me hands-on experience building, deploying, and maintaining a production-quality web application.
Technologies Used: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Prisma, PostgreSQL, Bootstrap, GitHub, Vercel
Project Links:
Live Site: https://manoa-lost-and-found.vercel.app/
Organization GitHub: https://github.com/manoa-lost-and-found