YiErSan

Landing Page
Signup Form
Inventory Management Page
Forum Post 1
Forum Post 2

What is your chosen theme and problem statement?

Our chosen theme was "Environment", and the problem statement Q1 regarding food wastage.

What does your hack do?

Our hack provides an inventory management system which allows for ease of cataloging and tracking expiry dates of stored food items for both personal use and for businesses.

How does your hack answer the problem statement?

Our hack can help with better food management for existing items in storage, reducing food wastage owing to forgetting and leaving food to expire. By cataloging stored food items and using colors to remind the user of expiring food, companies and households will be able to take note of which food items should be consumed first before the expiration date. Therefore, users are equipped with a better understanding of their inventory, and can plan their upcoming meals to reduce food wastage.

With the intuitive design and visual representations, our hack can also encourage better stock planning, further reducing food wastage. By knowing exactly how much food they have in stock, it can grant Singaporeans a greater degree of precision in estimating how much they should purchase and of which item. This preemptively prevents food wastage, as less excess food is bought.

This is especially relevant during this volatile period where the food security and supply chain resilience of our nation is of concern. In such trying times, it is even more important for us to work together in managing Singapore's food resources.

How did you build your hack?

We first decided on the theme and started with generating ideas together. Ultimately, we chose the theme on food wastage because, as home cooks and former FnB employees, we have personally observed how large quantities of food can be thrown away simply because they expired and could not be finished in time.

After discussing and determining the features and design of our hack, we decided to build our hack on the JAM stack, utilizing Bootstrap for front-end styling and Firebase as our backend. We split the workload into the frontend and backend, further splitting the former into separate components for two of us to tackle.

For the first index page, the sign up and log in pop ups, as well as the account details pop up were constructed from Bootstrap and linked to our firebase backend. The logo was designed and created on Canva.

For the home page, there were three primary components - the navigation bar, the form to add new food items, and the table displaying the catalogue of existing food items. Each of these components had to be addressed separately, and the frontend had to be designed first before backend implementation could progress. Bootstrap was also heavily used to stylize our components.

After completion, we re-evaluated our product to see if it truly will address the situation. However, we realized that if a user has simply too much excess than they can finish, we should provide a means of allowing them to sell or give away their consummables to others. Hence, on top of the inventory management system, we also decided to include a forum website feature, where users can upload posts regarding their excess stock, and hopefully be able to clear them in order to reduce food wastage.

And thus, our project YiErSan-Chi! was born.

What are some difficulties you overcame?

One difficulty we overcame was the idea generation and wireframing. We wanted to come with a more novel idea that would address the specific problem of food wastage. Even after establishing a direction for the project, there were some miscommunication regarding the design of our web app during the wireframing process.

Another difficulty encountered was collaborating using version control. We did not establish a proper version control workflow, which led to many merge conflicts as the backend and frontend teams tried to sync their work with each other. This led to a lot of time wasted resolving said merge conflicts.

What was your biggest learning point from LifeHack 2022?

In this age of technological advancement and virtual interconnectedness, we as coders and developers are equipped with the ability to innovate to solve observed issues in society. Even prominent nation-wide issues that previously seemed beyond our influence can slowly be tackled through our "hacks" and ideas. This accessibility in contributing towards the societal growth has truly changed our perspectives on the potential influence of our innovations, and further emphasized our responsibilities as a coder to use it for the betterment of the communities around us.