The Dolphin Finder

Ahmad Alrafati, Verrazzano Class of 2026, completed major in Computer Science 

During my time at the College of Staten Island, I noticed that because CSI is largely a commuter campus, students often have limited opportunities to connect beyond their classes. Everyone has different schedules, responsibilities, and travel times, which can make it harder to meet new people or form project groups outside the classroom. This makes it difficult to find others with similar academic interests, especially when it comes to group projects and long-term ideas. That is what motivated me to create Dolphin Finder, a platform designed to help CSI students meet, collaborate, and build project teams more easily. The app can help students across many majors: a business major could find a computer science student to help build an app idea, an art major could find a marketing major to promote a creative project, or a biology student could find a software developer to build a visualization tool. Dolphin Finder gives students one place to share ideas, discuss interests, and connect with people they might never meet in person.

I originally expected the capstone to be mostly about programming, but I quickly learned there was a lot more involved. I had to plan features, consider user experience, build the structure of the system, document my work, and test every piece carefully. At times, even small errors took hours to fix, and I often had to pause, rethink, and try multiple solutions. These challenges taught me patience and forced me to improve my problem-solving skills. Even though the process was demanding, seeing the app finally work the way I imagined was extremely rewarding, and it showed me how technology can solve real issues in a community when built with purpose and intention.

This capstone helped me grow both technically and personally. I learned how to take an idea from concept all the way to a full working system, and I became more confident in building full-stack software independently. More importantly, this experience reminded me why I majored in computer science, to build tools that can make people’s lives easier and more connected. In the future, I hope to expand Dolphin Finder by eventually making it available to all CSI students and even outside CSI. This project represents my journey at CSI, and it showed me that with commitment, planning, and creativity, a simple idea can become something meaningful, impactful, and useful for the community.