Austin Restaurant Inspection Scores Browser Extension and Website

[sheadscott]

What problem are you trying to solve?

The City of Austin provides a Restaurant Inspection Score Search on their website but it requires a consumer to navigate to the page and then fill out criteria for each restaurant they want to research. The data is returned in a table where there can be multiple inspection results for each location as well as multiple locations for chains like Thundercloud Subs.

By creating a free browser extension for Yelp and possibly other sites that list restaurants, inspection data can be placed where many people already look up restaurants. The data would be specific to the location and could be displayed in a simple format such as letter grades or an average of the last 3 scores with more granular data accessible through a link or popup.

There would be a companion website to display insights from the dataset of all inspections, such as average inspection score, how many inspections are performed each month, etc. The site would highlight the important contribution restaurant inspections make to citizens' health and quality of life, as well as areas where the city could improve.

Who will benefit (directly and indirectly) from your project?

Users of the browser extension and website will benefit directly by having convenient access to Health Score information, and all patrons of Austin restaurants may benefit from the extra scrutiny placed on restaurants based on inspection scores. The city will potentially benefit by having a way to track the most popular restaurants that currently haven't been inspected or other salient data points as well as from public awareness of the services they provide.

What other resources/tools are currently serving the same need? How does your project set itself apart?

Please see the first two paragraphs about why this is an improvement on the existing tool.

Yelp includes Health Score information from some cities already, but even if they were to start displaying it for Austin restaurants, users might prefer having it be more prominent, the methodology more transparent and having access to the full data available with a click.

Where can we find any research/data available/articles?

This article provides a good analysis of the issues and links to a 2005 study about how health inspection scores rose after Los Angeles implemented an analog letter grade system.

Yelp adds health inspection scores for restaurants, and restaurateurs are not happy

What help do you need now?

I have a working Chrome Extension prototype that can be used on a local machine as seen in the screenshot below.

I would like this to be a team project and need help with planning features, data analysis, design, and coding.

What are the next steps (validation, research, coding, design)?

The first thing I would like to do is come up with a responsible method for scoring the restaurants. All of the data for a restaurant will be available with a click, but I think there should be a letter grade or some other system that let's users know at a glance what the sanitation record is without unfairly penalizing them for one poor score or other factors.

The next priority would be the UI design, programming, and publishing of the Chrome Extension and the design and coding of a website with at least some basic information about the project and a few insights from the data.

If the project has enough traction, we can look at coding extensions for Firefox, Safari, and IE.

How can we contact you outside of Github(list social media or places you're present)?

Facebook

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