When2Eat

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  Dashboard

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  An example of a personalized text sent after an event ("eating") was created.

HOW TO USE Our project utilizes a secure code to access it, which is used to ensure that users join the correct group. To access the site, the code '1234' must be entered. Then, the site is accessed with example data including friends, points, and a progress meter. Clicking on record points adds 50 points (1 meal) to whichever friend is selected in the table, and the progress meter then reflects that. The "new event" button requires you to name an event and select a time and date, and then a personalized text is sent out to all friends in the list with the event details.

Inspiration

We were inspired by Otsuka - Valuenex's Challenge—to connect Gen Zers through food. We looked at our own behaviors and those of our friends and decided to gamify social meals, to encourage young people to eat together, which is scientifically proven to boost oxytocin and foster deeper connections.

What it does

When2Eat is a simple but powerful app. Invite your friends, join the leaderboard, and track your progress. Each meal counts as 50 points, and the group's progress overall contributes to different levels. Moving through these levels provides an incentive to go out and eat with your friends.

How we built it

We built When2Eat using Retool, a new method of web app development that allowed us, a beginner team, to produce a somewhat polished product in a shorter amount of time with less intensive code. By implementing this new technology, we were able to maximize our coding knowledge and create a useful app.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges during this process, but learned significantly from each of them. We struggled to create an effective button to track points, we struggled conceptually with how to introduce different friends to a group, and we struggled with how to integrate the progress of the group in a meaningful way. By taking advantage of online resources and collaborating with each other, we were able to push through these problems and deliver on our initial idea.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of our app's overall simplicity, and the effectiveness with which we implemented different aspects of the app—the app sends specific event notifications to group members via text, and has them join the group initially with a unique code (à la Kahoot) to ensure no confusion.

What we learned

We learned a lot about collaboration, coding, and the importance of connecting with others through food as a result of this project. Being forced to solve and debug small issues in our code forced us to become familiar with a new platform and with bigger ideas of hacking in general—turns out staying up for the better part of 36 hours isn't easy!

What's next for When2Eat

When2Eat strives not only to connect young people through food, but also to help reconnect the world post-pandemic. We plan to implement deals with local restaurants, farmers markets, and food trucks that allow users to redeem points for coupons, which would help to stimulate the still-recovering restaurant business. Mobile app integration would also allow users to access the features of When2Eat more easily and conveniently, so we plan to develop that as well.

Built With

• javascript
• retool
• twilio