reciPING

reciPING is the best way for you to generate recipes using what you already have in your kitchen.

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Domain.com Submission: reciping.tech

Inspiration

We noticed that amidst the pandemic, many people were struggling with home cooking. A lot of people either don't know how to cook, or don't want to cook. We wanted to create a platform that could help solve this problem and so we came up with reciPING!

What it does

reciPING is a web-based platform where the user inputs what ingredients and items they have in their kitchen, and using Google API to generate the recipes through Google's online database. We used Courier to create an SMS notification system to make it more accessible as people are more likely to have access to a smartphone than a computer.

How we built it

We got together as a group at the beginning of the hackathon and used design thinking to come up with a viable solution to our problem. We empathized with people who struggle with deciding what to cook at home in the middle of a pandemic. Then, we defined the problem statement, "People struggle with home cooking in the middle of the pandemic because they do not know what to cook and want to avoid cooking/takeout fatigue". Next, we defined 3 different solution components:

  1. A web-based platform with a simple user interface for users to input information
  2. Google API to generate recipes after learning what ingredients the user has
  3. Courier to notify the user of recipes they can use


    Our next steps were to create a prototype using Figma to do preliminary wireframes and testing. We determined that the user interface was easy to use and began front-end development using HTML/CSS and Python. While we were building the front-end, we were also figuring out how to use Courier and Twilio for our SMS notifications. After we tested Courier and Twilio, we started more of the back-end development using python, flask, mysql, APIs, and google cloud. As code doesn't always work the way we want it to the first time around, we had to go back and debug the code, again and again, to ensure that it works exactly the way we had planned for it.

Challenges we ran into

Courier and Twilio was a particularly difficult obstacle that we had to face. None of us having used Courier or Twilio before, we had to learn this system from the very beginning. We spent many hours figuring out how to make a text message look engaging, and also to actually send a test text out to one of our members. Fortunately, we were able out to the Courier mentors and received feedback and help from them to help better inform our service.

What we learned

Some of us came from a coding background, whereas some of us were in design. The coders got to experience the design thinking process, and how to effectively use design thinking to better inform the web design process. Courier was a new platform to all of us, and therefore we each had to navigate through Courier to fully understand the platform and its usage. We asked for help from a mentor, and better understood how to use Courier to its full capacity for reciPING.

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