FeedYourNeighbor

Welcome to FeedYourNeighbor!
Register for an account
Set preferences especially if you're a potential recipient
Woo! Account created. This is the landing page for users to view giveaways
If you're looking to giveaway a leftover, snap a photo
Add more details, then POST
Algorithm finds a match! Potential recipient "claims" giveaway and now sees the route and countdown to pick up food
Poster receives notification. Everyone is happy

Inspiration

There were times when I, my household, or my club had much leftover food that we were able to give away to students. There were also times when we were not able to give it away. :( Our team built a web application that makes it easy for community members with surplus food to give it away to someone in need (and in close proximity). This technology helps anyone fight against food waste and empower another with perfectly delicious food!

What it does

Our website allows users to publish their donatable foods into an online database, available for other users to view. Users who are interested in retrieving those donations are able to mark their interest by deleting those food items off the database.

How we built it

We initially brainstormed the concept of food donation and broke it down into two perspectives, the giver and the recipient. For each side, we wrote out the basic functionalities. The giver needs to display the food/meal and get notified if someone is interested in accepting the offer. The recipient can see what food is available. We created mockups of the UI using Figma. As we started brainstorming more nice-to-have details (allergies, notifications, etc), we also looked into using Firebase Authentication and Firestore Database to store user and food information. Following a logical workflow, we added document fields to include other features to be displayed on the dashboard. Thus, the user can view and post surplus food that was available on the dashboard.

Challenges we ran into

Though it was easy thinking of more features, implementation was much harder. As a team composed of beginner hackers, we faced a steep learning curve with React, Javascript, and even Git.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are super proud to have developed a rudimentary product from idea conception to implementation as a completely novice team. :) Fun fact: 2/3 of us are bio/env. sci. majors.

What we learned

We learned to use online APIs, to work as a team, to merge (many) Git conflicts, and to follow the workflow required of real-world applications.

What's next for FeedYourNeighbor

Future implementation additions include using geolocation data to constrain food choices to nearby donations, enabling interactivity between giver and recipient, and hiding the addition and removal of food items on the list behind a level of abstraction.