Recallect

Inspiration

A survey conducted by Dalhousie University researchers found out that most Canadians were unaware of recent significant food recalls. In fact, did you know there was recent recall a few weeks ago across Canada for whole onions due to concerns of salmonella contamination?

With Recallect, you would have been in the know.

What it does

Our goal with Recallect is to give the general population increased accessibility to product recall information while ensuring the updates provided are custom and relevant to the user. Recallect is a mobile app that allows you to quickly find out if a product you’re interested in buying or have bought has been recalled using the Canadian Recalls database. Easily use our app to view recent recalls or search for recalls via barcode scanning or manual entry. You can customize your search results so that they are kept in what we call your “virtual inventory” so that Recallect can notify you if there are any recalls in the future.

Stay safe. Stay informed. Let Recallect remove the barrier and grant easy access to information regarding Canadian recalls to you today.

How we built it

As a flight that crossed between Alberta and Ontario didn't seem like the most feasible option, we decided to meet up online via Discord to hold our brainstorming session. We explored all options, no holds barred, regardless of how absurd, pointless, or outlandish the idea seemed. We then sketched out how we expected the app to look like and what features it would have. We then moved on to using a collaborative interface design tool to work on the UI called Figma. We also looked into the APIs to use with our project like the barcode lookup API and Canadian Recalls and Safety Alerts API that would work when developing using Flutter. We continued with this until we ran out of time.

Challenges we ran into

Going into this hackathon we were a solid team of four. Unfortunately, we had some attrition and our workforce was cut in half come build day. We also used new programs that we were unfamiliar especially considering one of our team members does not have a background in computer science. Despite these issues, we confidently waded these new waters and reached the point that we are today with Recallect!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're very proud of the project, ideas, and work we have done within the time constraints (time, knowledge, physical distance).

What's next for Recallect

We are thinking of adding a food scan feature that would search based on a database of food images for the product. We would also like to add an option to customize the length of time a product would be in the virtual inventory after searching.