- The project managers Emma and Sam live together and are trying to avoid going to shops due to the global pandemic.
- However, trying to order enough food for a single weekly delivery has been really difficult and we are often left ordering takeaways or having small meals towards the end of the week.
- We wanted to create something as a hassle-free way to ensure we had enough food each week and that meals were varied.
- Login to the app using your Google account
- You can personalise your account to state what dietary preferences and allergies you have to ensure the meals chosen for you are safe for you to eat.
- You can set up / join a family and meals will be personalised to everyone's needs.
- You can create weekly meal plans by starting a day you select and a meal plan will be generated for the next 7 days after that.
- Meal plans include breakfast lunch and dinner and can be viewed on a day by day basis.
- Meals are generated from a database hosted on google firebase but users can also create their own meals that are added to their family
- Each meal has a set of ingredients and portion size so that a shopping list can be generated and displayed so that families can ensure they buy the correct about of food to last them an entire week.
- You can leave a family at any point and join/create a new one if you wish.
- You can view information about your profile and information about the family you are currently in from the relevant pages.
- The first thing we created was a prototype of the app using adobe XD and a diagram was created to note down the data that would be stored.
- The app has been built in flutter and Emma has developed most of the UI with Sam and Logan working together on the back end.
- Sam set up the database on firebase and set up the google login.
- Aaryan has an interest in data science so has focused on how the data can be used in the project to improve it. He created surveys to send out to people to get default meals to add to the app along with learning to code some of the front end UI.
- The approach taken mainly was for Emma to develop the UI for each page and have Sam integrate the backend development after that. We found this was the most efficient way to use our time.
- One of the biggest issues was getting everyone set up on the android studio coding environment as we had members using both windows and mac. We learnt a lot from this as this is the first time working online with people we had never met before so helping people through screen share was challenging but we achieved it.
- Having never worked with flutter or firebase before, we had some issues working out how best to use/store and retrieve the relevant information for each action so Sam spent quite a while researching and learning the techniques needed.
- We also had a team member that joined our group and went away to code and never spoke to us again meaning we had to work on the areas we thought he had completed.
- Having never created an app in flutter before, we are extremely proud that we have been able to plan and develop a minimal viable product in just under 48 hours after it took nearly 4 hours to get all our teammates set up on the correct coding environments.
- Sam is now confident working with firebase
- Emma is confident in designing UI's using flutter
- None of the members of the team have ever used firebase or flutter together before so this has been a complete learning experience for us all.
- It has been especially useful for Emma as she plans to create an app in flutter for her dissertation
- Dart is also a new language to all of us and so we now have experience coding in another language.
- We were also unfamiliar with coding NoSQL database so this has been something that Sam in particular as developed knowledge on.
- Implement calories into meals so that users can also use the app to ensure they are eating healthy.
- Connect to a supermarket API for shopping lists to be exported to online carts to save even more time.
- Use data science to find users favourite meals and tailor the app to the individual user to provide a better experience.
- Add prices to meals/ingredients so that budget meal plans can also be made for people wanting to save money.
- Add a tutorials page so that any users who are unsure of how to use the app can follow either a video tutorial or an image step by step tutorial.
- Implement the functionality to be able to add allergies and dietary requirements to your account to filter meal choices.
- Ability to add your own ingredients to the app so you can make meals with your own ingredients