SpartanCutz

Search function, using filters
Image upload search function
Sample barber profile
Sample barber hairstyle examples
Sample barber booking page
Sample review and payment

Inspiration

One of my friends needed a haircut for an internship interview. However, most haircut options were so far that an Uber would be required to get there in the limited window after class. The few on-campus options didn't have the style he was looking for. After checking the MSU Snapchat story, where people regularly advertise their barbershop skills, he could not verify if the barbers had the skills they claimed to have. Upon hearing his dilemma, I realized that this was a real problem. Whether you need to look presentable for an internship interview or you just want to look nice, everyone deserves an easy-to-access, reputable haircut service.

What it does

SpartanCutz provides a barbershop network for all on-campus students. You can sort by the style of haircut you want or whether you want the haircut to take place in your dorm or at the barber's. If you don't know what style, then you can upload an image and SpartanCutz will process it and find a barber who has done that kind of haircut before. All the while, you can easily view the ratings of each barber that fits your criteria and use that information to create your perfect haircut experience.

How we built it

Our team started by researching photos of diverse hairstyles so that our vector database would be varied. We used MongoDB to create our hairstyle database and then created our search filters. From there, we split it into two teams - one team working on testing filters and generating users, while the other team worked on the project's vector image embedding and vector search capabilities. Finally, we capped it off by developing our frontend to be easy to use and pleasant to our fellow Spartans.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest hurdle was getting the vector image embedding to work. It was a new concept for all of us, so before diving into the backend we all needed to understand what exactly that concept is. MongoDB also posed a bit of a challenge initially, simply because it was a new database system that we were not used to.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud of developing a thorough and varied database in MongoDB as well as providing full vector image search capabilities.

What we learned

We learned how to divide and conquer topics that all of us were altogether unfamiliar with beforehand, and how to develop programs in unison. To expand upon the last point, we are all familiar with programming - in an individual sense. Developing portions of a program in unison was a foreign experience for us, but it was one that we all greatly benefited from.

What's next for SpartanCutz

We hope to take our service and make it available to the rest of our fellow Spartans. This is a necessary service that often gets overlooked - but it is one we are happy to solve.