First of all, thank you for reading!
This is one of the many (I hope) stories about lessons I learned from building an app. It’s (tentatively) called the Kueh App.
Kueh, or Kuih or 粿 is a snack commonly found in Southeast Asia. I first got the idea to embark on this project, well it was to find a realistic project for me to try and build my first mobile app. I wanted to build something that I care about. History, culture and food. And incidentally, Singapore announced its plans to submit the Hawker Culture as a listing on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. I thought why not support the local culture in a meaningful way, and since food plays a big part in Singapore (or any country actually) and being a multicultural society, there are so many snacks available, I think I’m on to something!
I wanted to help do my part to conserve our local culture too; with so many types of kueh in Singapore, it’s not easy to identify them. And what a shame if people have no idea what they are eating, if only there’s an app to help identify the kueh. This app could be useful for tourists new to our culture and food!
Challenges
Well, for a start, I have no idea how to build an app. So the process can be a little tough. Secondly, the app would use some sort of machine learning and AI, so I have to learn that too. After a couple of months of research of how to get started, I’ve finally identified that I’ll be using React Native to build my app and for the AI portion, TensorFlow.
The thing about building an app as a Windows and and iPhone user is that I have to do it in XCode or Android studio. But XCode only works (if someone knows a workaround, please let me know!) in Mac, I don’t have a Mac. The other way is to build an Android app, well, the thing is I don’t have an Android-based phone, sure there’s emulator, but I felt I need to build something that I actually have an idea of how it looks (probably just a psychological effect).
I managed to get an Android phone from my Mum; and I’ve started to do a few things.
Install npm, React Native, Python, TensorFlow. Created an Expo account, so Expo allows developers to build cross-platform native apps just by using Javascript. Cool right? Yeah, rather than trying to learn to code in 2 environments (XCode + Android), it really helps to just do it in one. And the best thing is it acts like a native app, not a wrap-around app, a true app — which was what I was looking to do.
My target is to launch the app is in 2019.
Wish me luck.
