Biased

Inspiration

Our inspiration was drawn from a drive to give consumers the ability to know who and what they were supporting by buying a product.

What it does

It starts with a person using the mobile app, and takes a picture of a logo which is sent to Firebase. The image is then scanned by the Google Cloud Platform Cloud-Vision API, and the company is identified. Next, information and news is web-scraped, searching for keywords revealing environmental concerns, boycotts, scandals, and more. The information is then relayed back to the web app, which populates a results page for the user, allowing them to decide if they want to support these actions.

How we built it

We built it by first identifying our minimum viable product as a logo scanner, which brings back some results. After laying the framework about what we aimed to accomplish, we broke up the work and got down to business! Some initial key steps were establishing the HTML/CSS framework, and getting the image upload system together. At the same time, half the team worked on putting together the web-scraping function, and found a way to get it all together.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a few difficulties! Some included organizing and populating data within the javascript file; not being able to find a NLP API that could summarise text effectively, especially to generate a pros and cons list; rewriting the web-scraper from python to javascript to integrate to Firebase; and managing Firebase to upload images to be scanned.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Overcoming (almost) all of the above! Actually though, we all worked to learn something new and we definitely got there.

What we learned

We learned lots about how to incorporate backend APIs such as firebase and GCP to more frontend ideas. Things like the image upload system and web-scraper was a challenge,

What's next for biased

Other improvements we thought would be interesting would be to incorporate score based icons and website grading, an auto-generated content summary, and a pros and cons list based on content as well!

Built With

Submitted to

YHack 2019

Created by

I wrote the back-end with firebase and GCP CV API. I also designed the algorithm for summarizing text.

Michael Leung
My main task was working on hosting the website as a PWA (Progressive Web App) through firebase, for a more efficient and quicker user experience.

Michael Baskaran
I wrote the java-script for the web-crawler and keyword recognition algorithm.

Robert L. Kissinger
I worked on the design and Front-End development! Finding ways to connect the back-end content with HTML framework was a challenge, but I really enjoyed it.

Noah Pratt
Global Business and Digital Arts student, with an interest in branding, web-design, and coffee.