MindfulCart | Devpost

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Chrome Extension
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Inspiration

🦴 Our motivation for this project stemmed from our struggles to find safe and healthy food and treats for our pets, given the relatively lax regulations for pet food and the prevalence of filler ingredients.

While our initial inspiration was to address this issue, we ultimately decided to prioritize the development of an ingredient and health-conscious extension/application for humans. Our goal is to promote sustainable and environmentally-friendly purchasing habits, as well as healthy choices for people. In the future, we plan to expand our project to include information and features that cater to pet owners, providing them with reliable information on pet food ingredients and nutritional values! 🐶

What it Does

Our project, similar to the Honey Google Chrome extension, is accessible on e-commerce sites, with our current focus being Amazon for the purpose of the hackathon. The MindfulCart extension alerts users in a popup accessible in a single click if any harmful ingredients are present in the products they are browsing. This provides users with valuable information to make informed decisions about the products they purchase and encourages them to choose healthier and more environmentally friendly options.

How We Built it and the Challenges We Ran Into

Our project comprises both a website and a Google Chrome extension, which were built using Plasmo, React, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, and SASS. While developing our project, we encountered challenges in getting our extension to interact with e-commerce sites like Amazon, as we were working with the Google Chrome API for the first time. As a result, we pivoted from building the extension from scratch to using Plasmo. This helped us overcome the challenges and enabled us to focus on delivering a quality product that empowers users to make informed and sustainable purchasing decisions.

Accomplishments that We're Proud of

We successfully developed a Google Chrome extension and website that empower users to make informed and sustainable purchasing decisions.
Despite encountering technical challenges, we pivoted our approach and utilized Plasmo to overcome the obstacles we faced.
We leveraged a range of technologies, including React, TypeScript, HTML, CSS, and SASS, to create a user-friendly and visually appealing product.
We collaborated effectively as a team, drawing on each other's strengths to deliver a high-quality project within a tight timeframe.
Our project has the potential to make a meaningful impact on people's health and the environment, by raising awareness about harmful ingredients in products and encouraging users to opt for healthier and more sustainable options.

What we Learned

Although each team member possessed a unique set of technical skills, we encountered diverse challenges and worked together to overcome them throughout the competition. By leveraging each other's strengths and weaknesses, we learned from one another and grew as a team.

Moreover, we acquired proficiency in using Plasmo as a framework to develop a Google Chrome extension. By utilizing React, TypeScript, and TailwindCSS, we were able to tackle every obstacle that came our way.

What's Next for MindfulCart

We are currently working on several significant updates for the future, which we plan to pursue even after RowdyHacks. These updates include:

Integrating chemical detection technology into our platform to detect harmful substances in pet products like dog and cat food.
Utilizing AI to answer customer inquiries about products and educate them on how their eco-friendly purchases contribute to environmental preservation.
Introducing a "Discover" feature that recommends eco-friendly products without harmful ingredients to shoppers while they browse our platform.