Pantry Dial

DevFest 2020

Hong Sen Du, Yunlan Li, Aditi Dam, and Michelle Xu

Our Team

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Aditi Dam

SEAS ‘23 CS

Michelle Xu

CC-23 CS-Math

Hong Sen Du

SEAS ‘23 CS

Yunlan Li

SEAS ‘23 CS

We are four freshman brought together by our shared concern about food-related issues on campus: peers who don’t have stable access to food, food wasted by dining halls, etc

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Problem

Hunger

• According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (2015), around 800 million people do not have enough to eat. Decreasing [food loss and waste] will contribute to reduce world hunger and improve food security (Vilariño, et al.)

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Source:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2017.00021/full

Food Waste

• “US restaurants generate an estimated 22 to 33 billion pounds of food waste each year” (foodprint.org)
• “Households are responsible for the largest portion of all food waste … US households waste 76 billion pounds of food per year … [this is] approximately 40 to 50 percent of food waste” (foodprint.org)
• In 2012, the food Americans threw away would have provided 2,000 calories per day to more than 80% of the nation’s adults (Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics)

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Sources:

https://foodprint.org/issues/the-problem-of-food-waste/

https://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(17)30325-8/fulltext

Solution

Current Solutions

• Other apps with a similar goal only allow restaurants/organizations to donate leftovers, or allow individuals to donate to an organization, thus requiring transportation
• Many also just offer discounts for anyone rather than being targeted toward the food-insecure population

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Our Solution

• Allow individuals and organizations to donate surplus food
• Receivers can rate donors, thus allows donors to accrue credibility over time
• Food is given away for free, and thus targeted for the food-insecure

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How does it work?

The tools

• Our entire app is built in React Native which allows us to quickly prototype
• We used a combination of the React Native Maps library and Google Maps API in order to get the best of both worlds
• Our backend is handled by Firebase, which takes care of authentication, storage, and storing of map markers

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A Look Into the Process

• Our app has two main users, those who do not have a stable source of meals and those who have extra food that they do not want to dispose of.
• Logically, it means sense to make sure each type of user has a different experience making the app.

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A Look Into the Process

• We require only donators to make an account. This is to add another level of security through email verification and profiles to crack down on fraud.
• These donors fill out a form in the app that specify things like address of pick up, type of food, and number of servings.

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A Look Into the Process

• Once added, a marker will appear on the app that has all the information needed.
• Those looking for food will claim these on a first come, first serve basis

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Demo

Wireframe

DONATE

SEARCH

SIGN UP

LOGO

TITLE

Homescreen

Donate Page

Search Page

List of Items:

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# of Servings:

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Perishable or not:

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Range of Time:

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Address:

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Map that displays

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Next Steps

Our Next Steps

Gamification

By gamifying the process of donating food through point accumulation and leaderboards, more people will be inclined to donate

More Customizable Forms and advanced filters

We understand that there could be a range of circumstances that our app does not cover, but we are working on more solutions to ways to these issues.

Improvement of Design

UI and UX design define user experience, and we plan to carry out more professional designs later on. The short time frame of the hackathon made us focus our attention on backend technicalities

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Credits

Special thanks to all the people who organized DevFest.

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