Sean Howard \u201929 (BUS) is not a code writer or a programmer.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t have a background in computer science, and he comes from a family of teachers, not engineers.<\/p>\n
But the first-year School of Business student from Branford, who hasn\u2019t settled on his major quite yet, is an entrepreneur, which means that he tends to look at the world around him with an entrepreneurial mindset \u2013 seeing a need, and then trying to meet that need with a solution.<\/p>\n
And in his first semester at UConn Storrs, he found a need.<\/p>\n
\u201cInitially, I just had an issue with how difficult it was to track what I was eating at the dining halls, because I like to track my food,\u201d Howard explains. \u201cI like to be health-conscious about what I\u2019m putting in my body, and I knew a lot of people felt the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n
UConn\u2019s Dining Services publishes publicly available daily menus online<\/a> for each of its dining locations. It also offers nutrition information for all offerings as well as information on allergens and dietary restrictions and preferences<\/a>, like gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan options.<\/p>\n But Howard found that combing through that wealth of data, and then using it to track things like calories, protein, allergens, and meal options, wasn\u2019t always so easy.<\/p>\n And even though he doesn\u2019t have allergies or health conditions himself, nutrition is something that\u2019s important to him, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cI think what you eat is a key factor in how you focus in school, how you sleep, how you feel, how happy you are, your relationships with others \u2013 I think it comes down to how you treat yourself,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Inspired by what he was learning in a first-year seminar called \u201cUsing Your Entrepreneurial Skills to Get a Job or Start a Business,\u201d taught by Kathy Rocha<\/a>, associate director of the Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Howard decided to try to make it easier to track his nutrition in UConn\u2019s dining halls by building an app.<\/p>\n Something he\u2019d never tried to do before.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was hard at first,\u201d admits Howard. \u201cI think once I found to right tools to use while coding, it really accelerated the process, but it was difficult in the first few months.\u201d<\/p>\n Howard began working on his project in November, mentored in his work by Rocha and the Werth Institute\u2019s director of leadership development, Katie Britt.<\/p>\n He also found support from UConn Dining Services for his efforts.<\/p>\n \u201cSean contacted me in January about his desire to build an app that would focus on helping students make nutritional decisions as they visited our dining locations,\u201d says Michael White, the executive director of Dining Services. \u201cOur goal in working with Sean was to assist in narrowing the scope of the project into manageable development sections, tackling difficult topics that need to be considered when providing nutritional information.\u201d<\/p>\n In building the app, Howard relied on new artificial intelligence tools that helped with the complicated coding. There was a lot of trial and error, he says, until he found programs that met his needs.<\/p>\n After months of work and consultation, he launched his app \u2013 called Swipe<\/a> \u2013 in late February. It\u2019s available for free for Apple iOS download through his website and in the App Store.<\/p>\n Each day, Swipe collects the publicly available data from Dining Services about the weekly menu items offered in each UConn Storrs dining location and serves it up through an easy-to-use interface. In addition to nutrition tracking, Swipe offers a score for each individual menu item \u2013 the scores are based on data about protein, fiber, sodium sugar, and saturated fat, as well as personalized health conditions.<\/p>\n Swipe also allows users to filter based on allergens – things like dairy, eggs, gluten, soy, and nuts – and to set alerts that let a user know if a favorite menu item is being offered in a particular location on a particular day.<\/p>\n \u201cYou go on the app, and you can select your allergens, your dietary preferences \u2013 if you\u2019re a vegan, pescatarian, vegetarian,\u201d says Howard. \u201cYou can also select any health conditions. Maybe you\u2019re deficient in iron, or you have high blood pressure, and it gives each item in every dining hall a personalized health score from one to 99.\u201d<\/p>\n The scores, he explains, are based on an algorithm that uses peer-reviewed research to come to a consensus on a dietary recommendation.<\/p>\n