Inspiration
As a tea lover frustrated by generic recommendations, I wanted to create a tool that blends my passion for tea with personalized wellness. Watching friends struggle to find teas that fit their busy lifestyles (morning focus, evening relaxation) sparked the idea to merge taste, health, and daily routine into one intuitive platform.
What it does
Tea Sommelier AI delivers hyper-personalized tea suggestions based on health goals, flavor preferences, and time of day. It also offers expert brewing guides, a searchable tea library, and a digital journal to track tasting experiences and uncover personal tea trends.
How we built it
I started by mapping user journeys (from preference selection to journaling) and designing a visually immersive UI with warm, tea-inspired animations. I coded the core with HTML/CSS/JavaScript, used React for component structure, built a scoring algorithm for recommendations, and leveraged LocalStorage to store user data for a seamless, account-free experience.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest hurdle was balancing rich animations with performance – ensuring scroll-triggered effects and parallax backgrounds didn’t slow load times. Refining the recommendation algorithm to weight health goals, taste, and timing fairly also required dozens of iterations to feel intuitive.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Creating a fully responsive design that works flawlessly on mobile and desktop, and building a journal feature that turns tasting notes into visual, actionable insights (like monthly flavor preference charts). Users love the smooth, immersive animations that make tea exploration feel joyful, not tedious.
What we learned
I deepened my understanding of UX animation best practices (respecting prefers-reduced-motion settings) and learned to build robust client-side data structures for LocalStorage. Most importantly, I discovered how to translate complex tea knowledge into simple, accessible guidance for both new and seasoned tea drinkers.
What's next for this project
I plan to add a community feature for sharing tasting notes, integrate a tea subscription matcher (aligned with user preferences), and expand the tea library to include rare, regional varieties. I also want to add a brewing timer tool and sync with smart kettles for automated temperature control.
Built With
- chart.js
- css-animations
- javascript
- localstorage
- react
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