Senior computer science student builds progressive web application
Inspired by a past Oswegonian opinion article from Sept. 2024, written by Gabrielle Peterson lamenting the poor user interface of the school released dining hall website, SUNY Oswego student Vandanbhai Patel took matters into their own hands and programmed a progressive web app which gives the same information as the school-run dining hall website but with more user friendly formatting. He said it initially started as a personal use product but after some of his friends showed interest he decided to roll it out for more people to access. Patel is a senior computer science major who said that “One of the reasons I built it was the frustration of navigating the current CBORD NetNutrition website. While looking into the issue, I came across The Oswegonian’s September 2024 article describing the same problem.” Patel sent over a link sharing what his personal use project came out looking like.
When opening the link there is an automated disclaimer stating that the application is student made and designed, not created by the university’s professional staff. The app design looks simple and is easy to use. On the left hand side there are three options under the title Oswego Dining: Menu, Picks, and Chef. The menu option shows everything being served on that day by the food station. The picks option offers top protein rated food items available for that day, with a rating system from the most grams of protein to the least grams of protein. The chef option offers AI built dishes created from the daily menu based on different meal goals such as maximum protein intake or better flavor. Patel says that he loves the tools AI can provide for projects like these as they expedite his process and that “alone they produce many mistakes and security flaws, but working together with it makes for a nicer final product.”
Below these main three options is a tab slider which lets you choose from one of the three on-campus dining facilities with a note on each one informing you of when the hall will open or for how long it is open until if it is already open. Below this is a meal selecting option which lets you choose from breakfast, lunch, or dinner menus. Followed by the various hours for each meal type and filters which allow the user to choose allergens they would like to avoid like shellfish or tree nuts as well as food preferences like gluten free or halal as a way to choose which menu to view. Patel shared that he added the beef filter option since he is a follower of Hinduism, a religion that does not encourage consuming beef products, and that the current school website offers notes on when the menu has allergens or is gluten free, but not when it contains beef.
These last two options are incredibly useful for someone who has to eat a certain diet to be able to choose a dining hall to visit without clicking through the school run website, which does not have any of these options to filter meals, although it does offer more in-depth information on each menu item with several more clicks. The school run website has also run into issues in the past with showing menu items that were not actually available. Patel’s app runs off of data from SUNY Oswego dining so it may also run into these types of problems occasionally, but for ease of access Patel’s app is in the lead.
Patel mentioned that he has a meeting with auxiliary services soon to discuss his web app and possible collaboration with the school. He also works as a resident assistant at Funelle hall and has more personal made apps, including one for his RA job that allows him to keep track of his on-call schedule and to let his residents know where he is if they need to get ahold of him. As a senior in the computer science department he does not have a required capstone project like the students from the software engineering track do, but says that if he did, then this website would work well for that purpose. There were many iterations of this final product and Patel mentioned that the current NetNutrition website design the university uses is utilized by other big name universities, but they have the same issue of poor user interface design. He hopes to get word out about his web app design and gain more users to keep improving his design skills and experience.
