Inspiration
When we heard about using food as a means of love and connection from Otsuka x VALUENEX’s Opening Ceremony presentation, our team was instantly inspired to create something that would connect Asian American Gen Z with our cultural roots and immigrant parents. Recently, there has been a surge of instant Asian food in American grocery stores. However, the love that exudes out of our mother’s piping hot dishes is irreplaceable, which is why it’s important for us, the loneliest demographic in the U.S., to cherish our immigrant parents’ traditional recipes. As Asian American Gen Z ourselves, we often fear losing out on beloved cultural dishes, as our parents have recipes ingrained in them out of years of repetition and thus, neglected documenting these precious recipes. As a result, many of us don’t have access to recreating these traditional dishes, so we wanted to create a web application that encourages sharing of traditional, cultural recipes from our immigrant parents to Asian American Gen Z. We hope that this will reinforce cross-generational relationships, alleviate feelings of disconnect and loneliness (especially in immigrant families), and preserve memories and traditions.
What it does
Through this web application, users have the option to browse through previews of traditional Asian recipes, posted by Asian or Asian American parents, featured on the landing page. If choosing to browse through, users can filter (by culture) through recipes to get closer to finding their perfect dish that reminds them of home. In the previews of the dishes, users will find the difficulty of the dish (via the number of knives – greater is more difficult), the cultural type of dish, and will also have the option to favorite/save a dish. Once they click on the preview of a dish, they will be greeted by an expanded version of the recipe, featuring the name and image of the dish, ingredients, and instructions on how to prepare and cook this dish. For users that want to add recipes to yumma, they can utilize a modal box and input various details about the dish. Additionally, users can also supplement their recipes with stories about the meaning behind each dish, sparking warm memories that will last forever.
How we built it
We built yumma using ReactJS as our frontend, Convex as our backend (made easy!), Material UI for the modal component, CSS for styling, GitHub to manage our version set, a lot of helpful tips and guidance from mentors and sponsors (♡), a lot of hydration from Pocari Sweat (♡), and a lot of love from puppies (♡).
Challenges we ran into
Since we were all relatively beginners in programming, we initially struggled with simply being able to bring our ideas to life through successful, bug-free implementation. We turned to a lot of experienced React mentors and sponsors (shoutout to Convex) for assistance in debugging. We truly believe that learning from such experienced and friendly individuals was one of the biggest and most valuable takeaways from this hackathon. We additionally struggled with styling because we were incredibly ambitious with our design and wanted to create a high-fidelity functioning app, however HTML/CSS styling can take large amounts of time when you barely know what a flex box is. Additionally, we also struggled heavily with getting our app to function due to one of its main features being in a popup menu (Modal from material UI). We worked around this by creating an extra button in order for us to accomplish the functionality we needed.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
This is all of our first hackathon! All of us also only recently started getting into app development, and each has around a year or less of experience–so this was kind of a big deal to each of us. We were excitedly anticipating the challenge of starting something new from the ground up. While we were not expecting to even be able to submit a working app, we ended up accomplishing some of our key functionality and creating high fidelity designs. Not only that, but each and every one of us got to explore interests we didn’t even know we had. We are not only proud of our hard work in actually making this app come to fruition, but that we were all so open to putting ourselves out of our comfort zone and realizing our passions for these new endeavors. We tried new tools, practiced new skills, and pushed our necks to the most physical strain they could handle. Another accomplishment that we were proud of is simply the fact that we never gave up. It could have been very easy to shut our laptops and run around the Main Quadrangle, but our personal ties and passion for this project kept us going.
What we learned
On the technical side, Erin and Kaylee learned how to use Convex for the first time (woo!) and learned how to work with components they never knew could exist, while Megan tried her hand for the first time at React and CSS while coming up with some stellar wireframes. Galen was a double threat, going back to her roots as a designer while helping us develop our display component. Beyond those skills, our team was able to connect with some of the company sponsors and reinvigorate our passions on why we chose to go down the path of technology and development in the first place. We also learned more about ourselves–our interests, our strengths, and our ability to connect with each other through this unique struggle.
What's next for yumma
Adding the option to upload private recipes that can only be visible to you and any other user you invite to view it (so that your Ba Ngoai–grandma’s—recipes stay a family secret!)
Adding more dropdown features to the input fields so that some will be easier and quicker to use
A messaging feature where you can talk to other users and connect with them, so that cooking meetups can happen and you can share this part of your identity with others
Allowing users to upload photos of what they make from recipes they make and post them, where the most recent of photos for each recipe will be displayed as part of a carousel on each recipe component.
An ingredients list that users can edit to keep track of things they want to grocery shop for while browsing
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