Pinz

Pinz is an application designed to make it easier for international students to integrate socially.

Arriving in a new city or country often means having to rebuild your social circle from scratch. Pinz addresses this problem by bringing organised activities together in one place, easily accessible from a web or mobile application.

Students can discover what's happening around them, join an activity, meet other participants and keep in touch after the event.

Find and join an activity

At the heart of Pinz are activities. They bring together the information participants need: description, times, location, organiser and participants.

The application lets users filter available activities and quickly find ones that match their interests.

Explore what's happening around you

An interactive map also lets users view activities by location.

This makes discovery more natural: instead of browsing only a list, users can quickly spot events organised around them and explore their city.

Build connections beyond the activity

Taking part in an event is just the first step. Pinz includes several features that help people build on the connections they make in real life.

Users can find other students, chat with them directly and gradually grow their network.

The buddy system

Pinz also includes a buddy system, designed to create a more direct connection between students.

The idea is to let a student who is already settled in help another user discover the community, then gradually encourage them to do the same for newcomers.

An identity tailored to each student

Each user has a profile with information useful to the community, including their interests, languages and other details that help people connect.

Settings let users manage their account preferences, privacy and notifications.

Track platform activity

Pinz is more than the interface students use. The platform also includes tools for monitoring how it works, user activity and organised events.

This data helps provide a better understanding of how the platform is used and to gradually improve the experience.

A web and mobile application

From the outset, Pinz was designed as a product that works on both the web and mobile.

The web app is built with Next.js and React, wrapped with Capacitor so it can be installed on a phone (PWA). The different applications share some of their logic within a single monorepo.

The backend handles authentication, users, activities, participation, relationships between users, messaging and notifications.

Technical architecture

The project is organised as a monorepo, making it possible to share models, validation schemas and some common components across the different applications.

The main stack includes Next.js, Capacitor, TypeScript, Prisma and MySQL.

The web application can also be installed as a PWA, offering an experience similar to a native application directly from the browser.

From prototype to production

Pinz was developed as a real product for students to use, not as a simple technical demonstration.

The project has gradually evolved in response to user feedback, with new features, improvements to the mobile experience, stronger security and the tools needed to operate it.

The application is now deployed in production at pinz.fr and continues to evolve.