QuadroVision – FoodSciffer

Project Description

Insight and overview process

FoodSciffer is a not-for-profit initiative of QuadroVision with the aim of helping consumers, who want to know what they eat and select the food according to their preference. One can use one of our FoodSciffer apps or the FoodSciffer.org website for this.
At the end of 2014, we were confronted with food allergies and the fact how difficult it is and how much time it takes to look for foods that can be safely eaten. As a result, the same products are often chosen.
As real problem solvers, we came up with the idea of developing an app that would make it easier to choose the right diet. A team of designers and developers from QuadroVision in collaboration with nutrition experts finally delivered the first version of the FoodSciffer in May 2015.

Challenge

The challenge is three fold:

How to get the data of all the products
How to update the data every day
How to present the data in the app when there is no Internet

Solution

The retrieval the data of the products comes from data producers. We have agreements with a number of these data producers. We have the data of 2.2 million products.
The updates are retrieved daily from these data producers. We convert the data and store it in our database. In the process we also clean the data and add for instance the NutriCount.
To provide the data in the store (even without Internet) the data is stored on the phone. There is an advanced updating mechanism that takes care of keeping the data up-to-date.

Benefits

FoodSciffer is suitable for all people who want to know what they are eating, for example with a food allergy or intolerance, a diet or lifestyle. For suppliers and retail, FoodSciffer is a means to show the correct information, clear and transparent, to their customers before, during and after purchasing the products.