MacroTerpitech

Inspiration

Our team noticed a common struggle among UMD students: balancing nutrition goals with the reality of campus dining options. As students ourselves, we experienced the challenge of trying to meet specific macro targets while eating at dining halls. We were inspired to create a solution that would make it easier for students to make informed food choices that align with their health and fitness goals.

What it does

MacroTerpitech is a web application that transforms how UMD students interact with campus dining. Users can:

Set personalized macro goals such as calories, protein, carbs, and fats
Input dietary preferences and restrictions
Receive customized meal recommendations from UMD dining halls that match their nutrition targets
Track their nutritional progress throughout the day
Plan meals ahead of time based on real-time dining hall offerings

How we built it

We developed MacroTerpitech using a modern tech stack:

React for the frontend with Tailwind CSS for responsive design
Firebase for storing user profiles and nutritional data
BeautifulSoup and Selenium to collect and update UMD dining hall menu information
Gemini for querying in order to create the custom meals at the dining halls

We implemented a user-centered design process, conducting interviews with fellow students to understand their needs and pain points before developing our solution.

Challenges we ran into

Building MacroTerpitech wasn't without obstacles:

Web scraping the dining hall websites was difficult due to the amount of inconsistent formatting
Being able to get the information in a consistent format from Gemini in order to display properly was harder than expected
Developing a clean UI for users required a good amount of trial and error until we settled on something that all users would enjoy

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite the challenges, we're proud of creating a solution that:

Successfully integrates with UMD's dining system to provide actionable recommendations
Delivers a clean, intuitive user experience that makes nutrition tracking accessible
Accounts for diverse dietary needs and preferences across the student body
Received enthusiastic feedback during our testing phase with fellow students

What we learned

This project taught us valuable lessons about:

The complexity of nutritional data and the importance of accuracy
Balancing technical capabilities with user experience
Collaborative development practices and effective task distribution
The importance of continuous user feedback throughout the development process
How technology can address everyday challenges in campus life

What's next for MacroTerpitech

We have ambitious plans for the future:

Expanding our database to include more detailed nutritional information perhaps expanding to UMBC and other campuses
Developing a mobile app to complement our web platform
Creating a community feature where users can share successful meal combinations
Partnering with UMD Dining Services to integrate our solution more deeply with their systems

MacroTerpitech aims to continue evolving to better serve the UMD community and potentially expand to other universities facing similar dining challenges.