We/Eat

Inspiration

Tinder, but for friends/meeting new people, through the medium of food.

What it does

A user creates a profile populated with some photos, food preferences, and interests. They then are presented other users profile cards, with a check or x mark. When a user 'checks' a user who has already done so for them, they are presented with the option to invite them to a restaurant that serves one of their mutual food preferences (presented by yelp api). The other user can then either reject, or initiate a chat conversation by replying with a suitable time. We are still working on yelp integration and the chat feature. For the sake of the demo, a user profile is not actually saved.

How we built it

We used jekyll (css+html+javascript) to create the website. We used mongodb/json for back-end storing and serving up of saved user assets to the person using the demo.

Challenges we ran into

This was the first time any of us had used html, css, and for all but one, javascript. It took us significantly more time than anticipated to style the website, create a 'card' template, and integrate the backend services with the front end. Notably, despite several hours of trying, we couldn't get the yelp api to work appropriately. Time delays also meant we couldn't get to actually build a chat feature, or accompanying chatbots for the demo.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Learning css/html and the fundamentals of web dev! We got from zero to a mostly minimum viable product in less than 24 hours, and the final result looks pretty decent all things considered.

What we learned

Beyond the basics, I think we all learned alot about setting expectations and the difficulty of making deliberate choices. At the end of the day, everything is done for a reason, and it's difficult and takes lots of energy to make sure those reasons are consistent with the vision of the project and our goals. Being realistic is important too. Some features we thought we wanted while brainstorming seemed much harder once we actually started. Recognizing this and adapting to it rather than wrestle with the original idea without making progress was critical for the implementation of the project.

What's next for We Eat

We all thought this was a great way to learn about web dev. Bridging the gap between demo and actual service would be even better - build a robust backend for saving real account info, chat feature, better front-end architecture, etc.

Built With

• css
• htm
• javascript
• jekyll