MSU Food Bank

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  MSUFoodBankSign

Inspiration

This project was inspired by the food bank who wants to develop a digital system for clients to submit food request. This project was an prototyping stage for a Design for America Project. This semester-long project sought to decrease food insecurity among graduate students, a major concern for many graduate students at MSU. Food insecure students visit the MSU Food Bank bi-weekly for supplementary assistance; however, this is non-digital. The current system requires vast amounts of paper forms, and the wait to finally get your food can take up to an hour.

What it does

Currently, the demo showcases the client form, walking the client through the different food categories available at the food bank, and allowing them to select food up to the maximum amount allotted per category per their nutritional profile. In the future, we want to connect this to two other forms: the one for the Nutritionist's Profile data & one for the Food Bank Administration that modifies the types and categories of food available at the food bank. We also hope build a database available for the food bank to store their client profiles.

How we built it

We delegated roles amongst our five teammates, who worked with: HTML, CSS, Javascript, MongoDB, and Node.JS. We spent a lot of time designing how the database system would work and how it would conform to the Food Bank's needs.

Challenges we ran into

The primitive database we worked on failed to the point of eventually no longer existing! And we definitely spent the vast majority of our time figuring out how to do the most basic things. More than anything, though, we learned the importance of understanding just how little of anything from the demo will ever make it to the product, so trying to create anything sustainable likely held us back more than helped us.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have a working prototype, because not only does this show success on the part of the research team that provided the research to create this database system, but it also provides a working prototype for the Food Bank and the MSU Technology Services to view while we try to implement a more feasible solution. This database system can possibly change the situations of many food-insecure students at MSU.

What we learned

Most of us came into this situation with little to no programming/coding experience. Progress was slow and full of troubleshooting, but we sincerely feel that we have learned more from these three days of programming than from entire computer science courses that we have taken. One learns best from the struggle of grappling with a problem by one's self rather than passively absorbing it in a lecture setting.

What's next for MSU Food Bank

MSU Food Bank can use this prototype to solicit help from outside Tech Companies & the MSU Computer Center in order to improve its food distribution capabilities.

Built With

• css3
• express.js
• html5
• jquery
• mongodb
• node.js