Introduction

A hackathon for students called Yahoo! Hack U was held nationwide in the summer, and I participated in the Sendai tournament. The app I made there won the ** "Excellence Award" ** on the day, and was praised by the judges as "I want you to continue developing!", And I will continue to update it in the future! !! I was enthusiastic about it personally, but ** When I thought about it carefully, I realized that "that? This. Isn't it used?" ** (I can't argue with it so far), and the project popped up. It's a story.

I hope that my experience this time will be useful for those who participate in the hackathon, so I will summarize the background of this time.

Conclusion

――The hackathon has almost all ideas!

love is blind! ――Please give yourself a breakthrough idea! !!

Until you get the award for excellence

What i made

When they photograph the label of foods such as convenience stores and supermarkets called "Belief Supporter", they recognize the raw materials and nutritional components, and Muslims and Hindus. , We have developed and released an app for foreigners visiting Japan that instantly visualizes whether or not there is food that is taboo for vegetarians. If you are interested, please see GitHub for code, demo videos, app links, etc.

The mechanism is very simple, using the Vision API, reading the ingredients and nutrition labels of foods, determining whether pre-registered taboo foods are included on the server (natural language processing), and foreign countries. It is to add translations for humans and visualize it.

Why did you win the award

The most common feedback from the judges was as follows.

-** Necessity (Challenging necessary issues while the number of foreign visitors to Japan is steadily increasing) ** -** Practicality (Published as a web app, you can use the app immediately on any device from the QR code) **

necessity

I think this was the decisive difference from the teams around me. To be honest, the products of other teams were all much higher in technology, but on the other hand, there were many entertainment-oriented "problems to be solved" or technology-driven (technology-based ideas that I wanted to use). ) Was the impression that there were many. ** **

From the time I come up with ideas, my team will come up with ideas in a "high socially hot field" (Olympic games, rugby, politics, etc.) → "Issues in that field" (meals, etc.) I was thinking about it. Of course, as a result of this way of thinking, I often can't think of anything that feels good, but this time I found something that felt good (issues related to food for foreign visitors to Japan), so I accelerated.

** Honestly, at this point, I understand that "I feel like I'll win a prize if it's completed properly", so if I get this feeling here, it will be quite motivating for the team. ** ** On the other hand, if I don't feel "I feel like I'll win a prize when it's completed properly", I'm not motivated even if I'm developing it. Better. (I have a lot of experiences of failing for the first time without being sure that I will develop it for the time being because I do not have time)

In fact, at the venue, "I think that the dietary problems of foreigners are quite serious considering the holding of the Olympic Games, etc." "I thought that it was really necessary for foreigners." Many people, especially foreign judges, were really pleased, saying, "I have a friend who is worried about this, so I would love to tell you!"

At this time, ** Absolutely more and more updates and PR! ** ** ** Then you can become very popular on Twitter! !! ** ** ** Done ah ah! ** **

I was burning in my chest.

Importance

This was completely lucky. There was no one in the team (2 people) who could develop a smartphone app, so I had no choice but to develop it with a web app, but this worked well, ** "Because it is a web app, it takes time to install it. It's okay if you don't have one! "** will be evaluated at the venue. Also, I think it was good to deploy the app on Heroku and have the judges use the app directly at the venue.

Why Posha

I couldn't refute one feedback comment

** "I think it's practical, but if you need to read a food label, it's probably more accurate to translate it in real time with google's translation camera." **

Oh Oh Oh Oh

I was really shocked when I saw this comment.

First, I realized that I couldn't refute this feedback comment.

And best of all, I've never noticed such a simple thing, and I can definitely do it! I was surprised at what I thought. I didn't think that was the case, so I searched for the superiority of this app, but I couldn't think of it in my own mind, and I lost motivation at once.

The more you think about it, the more convenient it is to translate food labels directly with Google Translate's image translation function on the spot. .. .. I was worried. ..

I'm completely discouraged.

I wasn't thinking of any alternatives.

I was busy exploring the latest trending industries and issues that could win awards, and as soon as I found the theme of "Food Issues for Foreign Visitors in Japan," I was excited and developing it. I think we should have thought more about ** "Are there any alternatives other than our own apps?" ** later. By doing so, I think we could have a discussion about "Isn't it okay with Google Translate's camera translation?" I was totally blind to the time-consuming and likely tasks.

Learn

――Issues-driven and social ideas are a big factor that leads to winning a prize, but is there any way to solve it already? Don't forget the argument ――It is easier to evaluate deploying as a web application than a smartphone application --Try error statement required

Finally (I'm looking for someone to cooperate)

To be honest, I would like to take a more personal approach to this "Food Issues for Foreign Visitors in Japan". This is because it is clear that the challenges will increase in the future, but there are no apps or services for them in Japan so far.

Unfortunately, the Belief Supporter we made this time ended up with the result "Is Google Translate good?", But since Google Translate is just a "translation app", there may be issues that Google Translate cannot solve. I think about it every day.

If you have any ideas or opinions, please contact My Twitter. Thank you for your cooperation. Thank you for reading.

I made an app for foreign visitors to Japan with a hackathon and won a prize, but when I thought about it carefully, it was useless.