Open Food Facts - Roadmap 2013
by Stephane Gigandet
1. Crawl ecommerce websites (Carrefour, Auchan...)
2. How can we gain more products coverage?
2.1. Partnership with stores (organic food for example)
2.2. Partnership with food product companies
2.2.1. Invite companies to add their products
2.3. Promote opendata in the food industry
2.4. Lobby the government to force opendata/publication of product characteristics in the food industry
2.5. Distribute leaflets prompting local producers to add their products at Le Salon de l'Agriculture and other such events
2.6. Propose a mode in the App to ask the user to scan a specific kind of product (can you scan a Bread Loaf ?) that is under-represented in the DB
3. How can we get more qualitative coverage?
3.1. e.g. better pictures, more complete and accurate data etc.
3.2. Make UI improvements to streamline additions
3.3. Prompt the user when he is home via random (and few) notifications around lunchtime "Hey wanna open your fridge and contribute ?"
3.4. add a cooking time field
3.4.1. Automate the process as much as possible
3.4.1.1. try to detect the oval circle around the origin data
3.4.1.2. try to detect the AB logo automatically
3.4.1.3. try to detect a bunch of stuff automatically
3.4.1.4. perform OCR on all new products
3.5. Use several clues to orient images properly
3.5.1. EXIF Data
3.5.2. Text orientation through OCR
3.5.3. Enable image rotation without having to edit the whole page
4. How can we get more visibility for the project?
4.1. In the press?
4.1.1. Contact specialized journalists about health issues and scandals (eg provide them data on salt in products, meat...)
4.1.2. Develop a narrative around: "The wikipedia of the Food Industry", opening little secrets...
4.2. In the scientific community?
4.2.1. Health
4.2.2. Nutrition
4.2.3. Computer science
4.2.3.1. Student projects
4.2.3.1.1. We can propose interesting problems to solve that students can drive and resolve.
4.2.3.1.2. Improve ingredients recognition from photos
4.2.3.1.3. Logos (Bio / Organic, Max Havelaar etc.) detection
4.3. On social networks
4.3.1. Regular posts about products being currently advertised, and a fact check against their OFF page.
4.3.2. Use Email Verification to promote the Google+ page within gmail : https://support.google.com/plus/answer/3190197?hl=fr
4.4. in Education
4.4.1. projects with schools, universities
4.4.1.1. Edit-a-Thons
4.4.1.2. Coding projects, see above
4.5. In specialized conferences, exhibitions...
4.5.1. Le Salon de l'Agriculture
4.5.2. AgroIndustry Exhibitions
4.5.3. OpenData/FOSS exhibitions
4.5.4. dieteticians fairs
4.6. Get listed on the Chrome Webstore
4.6.1. Take advantage of being a Chrome App by using various available APIs and distribution methods
4.7. Streamline social media posts
4.7.1. Sync Facebook and Twitter so that Twitter posts get posted to Facebook
4.7.2. Use a system (command line or anything) to post to all social networks at the same time
5. How can we promote reuse of the data?
5.1. Add interfaces for diet planners e.g. cron-o-meter, etc.
5.2. Contact Google to have the data integrated in the Knowledge Panels
5.3. Use microformats to make data discoverable by search engines
6. How can we improve the site?
6.1. Recruit more developers, not only contributors
7. How can we improve the mobile apps?
7.1. Features for users (and not just contributors)
7.1.1. Product comparator?
7.1.2. Barcode recognition-based cookingTimer which uses the recommended cooking time on OpenFoodFacts or prompts it if not available
7.1.3. Don't be afraid to prompt for contributions via notifications
7.2. How can we boost international versions and communities?
7.2.1. Create a taskforce for each language
7.2.1.1. A few highly motivated persons who coordinate actions between themselves to create strong communities in each language and/or country
7.2.1.2. If interested to be part of a taskforce, please add yourself in the Taskforce for "Open Food Facts in [language]" below.
7.2.2. Complete translation of the interface
7.2.3. Launch international versions of the mobile apps (or better: support multiple languages)
7.2.3.1. detect user location and change target upload OFF accordingly ?
7.2.4. Create local versions of the Open Food Facts blog with news etc.
7.2.5. Create local "missions"
7.2.6. Present project outside France
7.2.6.1. barcamps
7.2.6.2. Local contributors can present, and/or foreign contributors could travel
7.2.7. Reach local organizations
7.2.7.1. SlowFood
7.2.8. Open Food Facts in English
7.2.8.1. Complete translation of Terms of Use, Legal etc.
7.2.9. Open Food Facts in Spanish
7.2.9.1. Taskforce
7.2.9.1.1. Javichu
7.2.10. Open Food Facts in German
7.2.10.1. Visit Barcamp Nürnberg
7.2.11. Open Food Facts in Italian
7.2.11.1. Visit SlowFood HQ in Torino
7.2.12. Open Food Facts in Arabic
7.2.13. Make the App icons more prominent on the Website (not at the bottom of the page !)
7.2.14. Use the social networks to promote direct app install, on a regular basis
7.3. native apps
7.3.1. take advantage of notifications to prompt for contributions
7.3.2. geolocalize product input to propose autofill
7.3.3. rotate barcode sanely with device rotation
7.3.4. look and feel more robust, fast and integrated
7.3.4.1. reduce learning time as app become more sophisticated
8. How can we build stronger contributor communities?
8.1. Add value to contribution (status for example, see StackOverflow point system)
9. How can you edit this mind map?
9.1. Please do edit, add and comment on this mindmap!
9.2. You can create a free account to edit the map: http://www.mindmeister.com/?r=40389
9.3. This mind map started on January 18th 2013.
9.4. This is an evolving roadmap, you can edit it anytime
10. How can we improve the existing data?
10.1. Harmonize brands, categories, labels, packaging etc.
10.1.1. Categories
10.1.1.1. Under way in French
10.1.2. Ingredients
10.1.3. Reward merging and make it super easy and fun to merge
10.1.3.1. Part of the app where the system asks yes/no questions for suspected duplicates.
10.2. Add more data
10.2.1. Additives
10.2.1.1. Origin, risk levels etc.
10.3. Move to Wikidata
10.4. Link data with Freebase/Wikidata (using Brands and Companies)
11. How can we make adding products easier or faster?
11.1. Get inspired by Amazon Mechanical Turk?
11.1.1. I'm not familiar with it, any examples of ideas / UI design / processes etc. that we could draw inspiration from ? -- Stephane
11.1.2. it's basing turning all the work to do in very simple jobs, doable by anyone, even with French knowledge
11.1.3. You can gamify it and give it to volunteers or give the small jobs to Amazon mechanical turk, and people will do them for a couple of euro cents
11.2. Radically simplify the UI
11.2.1. use the HTML5 API to let desktop users take photos
11.2.2. Use design cues from Wikipedia to reduce learning time
11.2.2.1. position of login/logout
11.2.2.2. position of international version
11.2.2.3. position of special pages
11.2.2.4. ...
11.2.3. In the Awards thing, let people click on the given example to add them to the field. I can't be bothered to type AB each time.
11.2.4. Reduce the length of the page so that you can always have the packaging for reference without having to scroll. Otherwise, the fields that can't be seen alongside the packaging are less likely to be filled (for a coynter example, look at what is done for nutrition data)
12. Who is interested in contributing and discussing this roadmap?
12.1. Please add your name (or userid on OFF)
12.1.1. Stéphane Gigandet - stephane
12.1.2. Manu1400
12.1.3. Grégoire Japiot
12.1.4. Javichu
12.1.5. Minchetas
12.2. Would you be interested to discuss it by video conference? (e.g. on Google+)
12.2.1. Stéphane Gigandet
12.2.2. Manu1400
12.2.3. Grégoire Japiot
12.3. Would you be interested to meet in Paris in February?
12.3.1. Stéphane Gigandet
12.3.2. Manu1400
12.3.3. David Bourguignon
13. What cool things could we do with the data?
13.1. Dataviz
13.1.1. New graphs that show the actual colors of food coloring in products
13.1.1.1. e.g. in scatter plot or pie charts
13.2. Add geographical info as much as possible (link with Open Street Map)
13.2.1. Represent in a map a category of products to see their regional distribution: citrics, oliva oils, wines, beers...
13.2.2. Trying to encourage local food consumption: e.g. following the California's 100 miles movement, place in a map a cicle surrounding your site with a 100 miles (or km) distance and the products inside that circle. More concentric circles can be added at diferent distances: 300 km, 1000 km...
14. Special projects
14.1. Aspartame
14.1.1. See http://fr.blog.openfoodfacts.org/news/evaluation-de-l-exposition-a-l-aspartame
14.2. Differences in products from one country/region to another
14.2.1. Europe & Africa
14.2.2. France & French Carribean
14.2.3. Spain and Latin America
14.3. Meat Scandal: where does the ingredient in a product come from ?
14.4. Partner with health organisations
14.4.1. Salt
14.4.2. Obesity
15. How can we recruit more contributors?
15.1. Target specific communities who can be interested by some aspects of the data we are gathering
15.1.1. Quantified Self community
15.1.1.1. Dedicated food log app?
15.1.2. Collectors
15.1.2.1. e.g. sodas, cans, sardines...
15.1.3. Groups with special dietary needs
15.1.3.1. e.g.vegetarians/vegans, celiacs, lactose intolerance, Halal, Kosher, Atkins diet...
15.1.4. Add an app to track BestBefore dates, what's in your fridge, what you should buy, and prompt for data input if not available. If Available, prompt for photos/whatever on a random basis to avoid annoying the user too much
15.1.5. dieteticians
15.1.6. Consumer associations (UFC Que Choisir, and their members and networks)
15.2. Enable connection using the Wikipedia authentification, OpenID, Google, Facebook and Twitter
16. What else can we open besides food?
16.1. Wine
16.2. Cosmetics
16.3. Prescription drugs
16.4. ?
17. Open Food Facts roadmap This is a mind map to create the 2013 roadmap for Open Food Facts, a free, collaborative and open food products database : http://openfoodfacts.org #opendata This mindmap also exists in French: http://www.mindmeister.com/249708241/open-food-facts-feuille-de-route-2013 The 2 mind maps will be kept in synch (manually), you can contributer to either of them. Or if you can, it's even better to add your contributions to both.
18. How can we get rid of the Big Bad Backlog ?
18.1. Add missions related to completing items
18.1.1. Nutrition data finder: Crops images for nutrition data
18.1.2. Ingredients finder: Crops images for ingredients
18.1.3. Brand Maniac: Add 10 missing brands to products
18.1.4. Add a mission for each missing field
18.2. Gamify item edition
18.2.1. Create a custom page where the system asks: Can you see a "Biologique" logo on any of these images, How much does the product weight ? …
18.2.2. Ask the same question to several people
18.2.2.1. Validate data if they agree on the value
18.3. Allow mass edit
18.4. Make assumptions to mass fill some fields
18.4.1. Dia products are sold in Dia
18.4.2. Auchan products are sold in Auchan
18.4.3. …