Inspiration
Our inspiration stems from childhood memories of watching brutal documentaries that unveiled the hideous truth of animal cruelty in consumer industries. We knew that we wanted to make a change, and becoming vegan or vegetarian isn't an option for many people, whether it be for social or economic reasons. That is why we decided to create Herdly, a platform that allows consumers to make informed, ethical decisions for sustainable practices.
What it does
Our web application helps consumers in three industries: cosmetics, meat, and hygiene products. It enables users to choose their preferences for the ethics of their products (example: cruelty-free v.s. vegan) and offers them brands that align.
How we built it
We used HTML and CSS to develop our user interface and python for our algorithms. We connected our front-end and back-end development through javascript. Four our information we gathered data from the USDA on livestock handling and used pandas and numpy to normalize and rate various companies based on their alignment with user preferences. We then connected this with our user interface through Javascript.
Challenges we ran into
Over the past day, our team focused on learning new languages and algorithms. For example, in our backend, we attempted to create a Singular Vector Decomposition Recommendation System (SVD). However, soon after coding the foundations for the program, we realized that we did not have the mathematical background to pursue this venture further, so we decided to switch to a Knowledge Based Recommendation System. We also had some troubles connecting our front end interface to our backend algorithm. We originally thought of using flask, but we had some hardware issues with our computer that forced us to use Javascript to serve as a connector between our AI algorithm and our front end interface. Finally, we had some issues with getting the data for our project. Since our idea was completely novel, and has never been done before, we had issues finding and normalizing data to use for our AI algorithm. We had to go through data we found from websites and edit it so that our algorithm could successfully read the information.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are extremely proud of our user interface as we created all of our own graphics and our own animation by hand. Our interface is extremely user friendly and aesthetically pleasing, which promotes the use of our application. We are also proud that we expanded our knowledge of AI algorithm's and included increasingly difficult HTML and CSS concepts that we have never used before.
What we learned
In the span of a mere day, our team managed to exceed our own expectations In terms of creativity, dedication, teamwork. We utilized numerous technical skills, which we never learned before, varying from complex CSS animations and advanced math for our algorithms.
What's next for Herdly
We hope to expand Herdly by expanding our database of companies to get a larger variety of companies to attract more users, as well as through adding a feature that allows the user to look up a specific brand and see their environmental impact. Additionally, we hope to make our user-interface more accessible on every device, including mobile phones, tablets, and more! We also would like to factor in price of the products when we provide our recommendations, so that consumers will be able to make an accurate judgement of whether or not they can reasonably support the brand.
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