WPI Food Review

It would be nice to know what people think of food. We created Food Review, to view food rating and provide feedback. It provides community members a more reliable and long term feedback data.

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Inspiration

I have been disappointed in the food at WPI several times. Occasionally, I would go to Morgans Dining hall and be disappointed that my favorite pizza isn't there or they overcooked the chicken. Meanwhile, there's a special event at the goat's head and the food is really good and I missed it.

What it does

It allows users to review food and it shows users the average score for each food and the location. The average score for each food and location will allow users to see how good certain locations are for their food. It also provides long-term feedback for community members to improve our dining experience

How we built it

Our team first started with a discussion of issues in the WPI community. After thinking through a few ideas, we settled on the inconsistency of food at our dining halls. We discussed the best approach to solving this problem and how to incentivize users to get on the platform. Then, using adobeXD we created mockups for the UI and designed the database structure using a entity relationship diagram. We used firebase and the create-react-app to get a lot of the boilerplate code out of the way and started building and debugging until we had a working website.

Challenges we ran into

Most of us had no experience working with Firebase or even a computing service. We had to learn how to work with the cloud and the database from scratch. In addition to that, we used javascript and react to code our project which most of us also had little to no experience with. We also had to deal with timezone issues. Two of our members are in the EST timezone, one was in GMT+8 and one was in GMT+9. This led to limited periods of time where all of our members can work on something together and also connection issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We took a business-like approach for this project. By having a discussion about possible competition, the value created, optimal delivery, etc, we had a stronger idea to follow with. This made us more appreciative and proud of our project as a lot of work was not only placed into making it into a prototype but also into creating a model that works.

What we learned

We learned how to use Firebase, a computing service to create a web app. We also learned a new database system, unlike SQL. In addition to learning the features and services of Firebase, we learned how to work with new programming languages like how to work with javascript and react, something most of our team members have no experience with.

What's next for WPI Food Review

We want to apply our point system incentive into our current prototype. With the point system we can reward users for reviewing typically ignored foods, or for being more accurate with their reviews, or for prompt reviews of new items. In addition, a genuine authentication process like using Microsoft authentication would improve the security of our website while also reducing spam. We have also considered including machine learning to analyze the data we collect and make predictions community response to certain dishes. This would also help to detect spam. Of course for a site made over 36 hours, there could be a lot of improvement in the UI and backend efficiency. However, we think that our project will take root in WPI's culture and become a staple in helping improve the community life.

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