Foresight

Link to Chrome Extension: https://github.com/isabelxzhou/hackgt/settings Link to Site: https://github.com/allensu02/foresight-web

Inspiration

The inspiration for Foresight comes from the growing frustration with corporate and political transparency. In today’s world, companies wield immense influence over politics and social issues, often prioritizing profit over ethical practices. These corporations donate heavily to political campaigns, influence legislation, and shape public narratives—all while their actual behavior remains largely hidden from consumers.

Most people want to support companies that align with their values, but there’s no easy way for them to know whether a company’s public statements match its actions. Information about corporate donations, environmental impact, and ethical practices is either buried or selectively shared. As consumers, we often don’t have a say in the political agendas these companies push or the impact they have on critical social issues.

Foresight was created to solve that problem. By giving people the tools to easily see where companies stand on the issues that matter most—whether it's LGBTQ+ rights, environmental sustainability, or corporate ethics—we aim to democratize access to information. Our goal is to empower users to make informed decisions about the brands they support and, in turn, hold companies accountable for the influence they wield over society.

What it does

Foresight is a Chrome extension that lets users gauge company values on issues like environmental impact, human rights, and LGBTQ+ rights, providing real-time scores based on corporate donations, ethical practices, and CO2 emissions, helping users hold corporations accountable to their priorities. Users take a quiz to set their values, and we analyze the results to create a personal profile. When users visit a website they can see that company's values in our Chrome extension. User authentication and profile information are stored securely on Firebase. Our company scores are calculated using data pulled from standardized APIs like ESG data and the machine learning algorithm.

This algorithm uses gradient descent, matrix factorization, and transfer learning to ensure the alignment score accounts for trends in user ethical priorities and company performance to provide a hybrid data driven metric.

Foresight allows companies to access valuable insights on user preferences by capturing data on what issues matter most to their customers, providing a cost-effective alternative to traditional research methods.

How we built it

We developed Foresight as a browser extension using web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, with Next.js powering the front-end framework. We integrated data scraping techniques and APIs to collect real-time information on companies’ practices, including their environmental impact, ethical behavior, and political contributions. The scoring system is built using a combination of web scraping and machine learning models to deliver accurate and up-to-date results. Additionally, we designed a user-friendly interface with Tailwind CSS and incorporated animation with Framer Motion to make the experience seamless and interactive.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was gathering reliable data in real-time. Web scraping ethical and corporate behavior information required us to filter out noise and irrelevant data, while also ensuring the credibility of the sources. Another challenge was making the browser extension lightweight while handling significant data processing on the client side. Balancing user privacy with data collection and analysis also presented its own set of complexities.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud to have built a tool that empowers consumers to hold corporations accountable for their actions. We successfully integrated real-time data scraping and analysis into a browser extension, which provides personalized ethical scores based on individual user values. Additionally, our design team created a clean, engaging interface that simplifies complex data, making it accessible for everyday users. It’s rewarding to know we’re helping users make informed, ethical decisions in their purchasing and browsing habits.

What we learned

Throughout the development process, we learned the importance of managing large datasets and designing algorithms that can filter out irrelevant or misleading information. We also gained insights into how consumer preferences can vary widely and how to build a flexible system that adapts to these differences. Finally, we deepened our understanding of the challenges involved in combining ethical data with usability in a product that needs to be both efficient and transparent.

What's next for Foresight

Moving forward, we plan to expand Foresight’s data sources by partnering with organizations that specialize in tracking corporate behavior and sustainability. We’re also exploring the possibility of integrating augmented reality (AR) to allow users to scan products in real-time and instantly see their ethical ratings. Additionally, we will improve our machine learning models to provide even more accurate and personalized scores. Ultimately, our goal is to drive systemic change by giving consumers the tools to make informed decisions and pressuring companies to uphold higher ethical standards.