Progress on Currently In Season app
Photo credit Tattfoo from the Nature Matching System project.
I’m building an iPhone app that lets you know what’s in season in your state. It’s a simple idea and a simple app, that hopefully has a use to people. I was inspired by a chapter in “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” that talked about the benefits of becoming aware of the way food comes to you, and how the benefit of that awareness is knowing when and where to get the tastiest, best, fruits and vegetables at the time of year that they are freshest, need to travel the least, and are the more environmentally friendly.
The Home Screen: what’s currently in season in your state?
After a week of work, I’ve gotten most of the data normalized and have set up the basic structure of the information on the iPhone. I’m trying to think of the best ways to display the information that I have… for example, from this screen above, I know how much longer a particular food will be in season, but what’s the best way to display that information? Would it be more or less helpful to show a food’s full year of availability than to only show how much longer it was in season? I think, in this case, that showing less information is going to be better. We really only need to know how much longer carrots will be in season and don’t really care at the moment when it will be in season again.
Another question to consider. Is it important at all to have the food sorted by name? Or should it be sorted by how much longer it will be available? Should the app encourage you to take advantage of foods that are going out of season soon over foods that are available all year round?
Food Detail Page
Then there’s the food detail page to consider. At a bare minimum, it will display the name of the food, a picture, and the states in which it is currently in season. However, should I use the fact that I know which state you’re currently in to highlight how many miles a particular item would have to travel to get to you? Would that information even be accurate?
I’m going to add a way to leave notes about a particular food. Perhaps commenting on its actual availability in a given season, from a given part of the country. This information could be shared with others in your area, and around the country.
Other things I’m considering:
- Being able to favorite a particular food
- Seeing a Google Map that visually displays the states that its currently available in
- Links to online info? Wikipedia? Some other resource? What kind of information would be useful to know? Nutrients? Shelf-life?
Notifications
The other feature I’m really excited about is to allow people to register their email addresses so that they can get notifications when food is coming into season or going out of season.
February 10th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
This is an awesome app that I will definitely use. As a start-up home gardener, one feature that would be really useful is a view that would show me what to /plant/ right now. This is probably in season -60 days for most vegetables, though it could change depending on where you live.
February 10th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Ooh, that’s a great idea. I will definitely add that! Assuming I can find the data somewhere.
I’m torn on throwing in a few more silly things that come in season, like sports.
February 11th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Hi Buster,
This looks like a wonderful app! Right after I got my iPhone, I bookmarked the CUESA seasonal fruit and vegetable charts (http://cuesa.org/seasonality/charts/vegetable.php) and it’s helped a lot with my goal of eating seasonally.
For the main display, would it be possible to change the color of the bar depending on how long it is still in season? Like green, yellow, red for urgency. From an interface standpoint, I think it makes sense to have the “All Food” screen sort alphabetically but the “In Season” screen to sort by increasing amount of time until it goes out of season. Some type of reference for what will be coming into season would be great as well.
I don’t think people are about to travel across state lines for produce. But what might be helpful on the detail pages is info on how to pick that particular type of produce, pictures of the varieties with descriptions on how they differ, and links to recipes in a major recipe website using the item.
For example, I don’t eat avocados much and a few weeks ago I was at the market and had no idea whether I should be picking firm green avocados or wrinkly black ones and what degree of firmness is ideal. I had to browse through a few websites to get a general sense of what to look for to work with my particular recipe. A quick reference like “Underripe = green, few wrinkles, very firm, Ripe = greenish-black, more wrinkles but no cracks, firm with some give, Overripe = black, heavily wrinkled and/or cracked, soft” would have saved me a huge amount of time.
Photos of different varieties would be great for produce like mushrooms. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve wanted to make a mushroom recipe and just blanked on the matching the name of a mushroom with its appearance.
And lastly, people are often willing to try new things but often don’t know how to use unfamiliar produce. I don’t know if allrecipes.com or supercook.com have API hooks but maybe a simply URL link would be sufficient.
Down the line, maybe a notes section so users can scribble things down for various produce, ie. what place has the best X, “girlfriend loves this roasted”, friend is allergic/hates Y.
Sorry about the flood of ideas but seeing your screen just reminded me of all the things I’ve been doing manually with a smattering of different iPhone apps so the possibility of having them all in one would be incredible (and something I would definitely shell out money for).
Cheers!
February 11th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Hey Patrick, thanks for all the ideas. The latest version of the design does focus more on making it easy to tell when certain things are going to go out of season. Coordinating the colors is part of it, but we’ve also come up with a better way of displaying how much time is left.
I like the site you’re linking too… it’s very similar to the one I’ll be putting up to supplement the iPhone app.
I am looking into a couple recipe APIs as well. And also information about picking fruit and vegetables. I’m not sure where to get that information though. Any leads would be awesome.
February 17th, 2009 at 3:32 am
Hey Buster, no problem. I’m always eager to help out with exciting ideas.
I couldn’t find any comprehensive resource for picking fruits and vegetables. However, I came across these:
http://www.dvo.com/newsletter/monthly/2000/july/freshfruit.html
http://gardening.about.com/od/vegetablepatch/a/HarvestTimes.htm
http://www.oldhouseweb.com/gardening/ripe-for-the-picking-tips-on-when-you-should-harvest-vegetables.shtml
[PDF] http://www.spokane-county.wsu.edu/spokane/eastside/Fact%20Sheets/C149%20When%20Are%20Vegetables%20Ripe%2005.pdf
http://aginfo.psu.edu/PSP/04psp/pr/04356_pr.html
I certainly wouldn’t mind assembling these into a chart of sorts. Now that I’ve found them, I’ll probably do it for myself to start. I’ll send you a link once I’ve got it going. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help!