Icebox Index

Inspiration

A common problem that we thought that many people had was using the ingredients they have to make delicious and nutritious meals. A lot of people waste food by either buying too much or not using before the expiration date. Also, many people have difficulty coming up with easy and unique dishes on a daily basis.

What it does

Although we did not have enough time to meet all of our goals, we created an app that allows users to keep track of the ingredients in their fridge. A user can input their ingredient along with their amount and change their amounts as they use them. By doing this, users will know what they need to buy at the grocery store and what meals they can make with it.

How we built it

We used Swift on XCode to develop this iOS app.

Challenges we ran into

During this hackathon, we encountered several challenges. First of all, as this was our first hackathon, it was difficult coming up with creative ideas to solve a common issue. We had several ideas that we were unable to implement because of our limited knowledge in programming as well as due to the limited amount of time. Once we narrowed it down to our topic, a major challenge was creating the application because most of us only had basic knowledge of Swift. This was challenging, but we were able to get around this problem by using the resources given to us and attending various workshops.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our newly gained knowledge of coding in Swift. Before, many of us did not know much about Swift, but we spent a significant amount of time learning how to use Swift.

What we learned

As said earlier, we learned a lot about programming in Swift. In addition to this, by attending the workshops hosted by West Chester University, we were able to understand how programming impacts a large aspect of our lives. For example, one of the workshops we attended was on web design, HTML, and CSS, and we were even able to code our own website. Another workshop we went to was on Python, and learning about a different programming language taught us that there are more ways to write code.

What's next for Icebox Index

In the next version, Icebox Index will be able to use the list of ingredients to come up with suggestions for recipes that can be made with them. These will be ranked based on how much they match with the user's inputs. Ingredients will be able to be sorted alphabetically, by expiration date, and food group to make the process more customizable. Finally, based on selected recipes, if there are ingredients that are included in a recipe which the user does not have, Icebox Index will provide links to grocery stores relative to their location where they can be bought. Our hope with this app is that making meals will be a healthier and easier process.

Built With

• swift