Startup Weekend Twin Cities — Foodseeking

2012

In 54 hours our team of strangers built a platform for finding gluten-free food in nearby restaurants. We realized that many people with food allergies have painstakingly found safe foods in their local restaurants, but the only way to share this information with a larger audience was online message boards. We wanted to create a solution that made this sharing and discovery not only easy, but serendipitous. Our application needed to be simple to use and fast to navigate. What restaurants are near me and what to they have that I can eat?

Over the course of the weekend, we managed to get the consumption half of an iPhone application and web application completed (i.e. no posting of foods you’ve discovered). We also did a fair amount of market research and amassed a large number of interested users.

Our group was awarded second place. Some members are still pursuing the idea, though I am not.

My role

I was responsible for the iPhone application design and implementation. It was an awesome chance for me to practice rapidly prototyping interactions and animations. Knowing that the code you’re writing will not ship but the outcome will be seen is surprisingly freeing and exciting.