How our team built 4 facial recognition apps in 2 days

Our founders challenged us to build our own facial recognition apps, so we held a weekend hackathon and built 4 apps in 48 hours.

"Challenge Accepted" is the line we live by, so that is what we did. We split the team into 3 groups, spent the days before the weekend preparing, and then the 2-day hackathon started.

Every app had to use facial recognition. A facial recognition system uses biometrics to map facial features from a photo or video, then compares them with a database of known faces to find a match. Phones that unlock after their camera scans and verifies the owner's face are a common example.

Each team had to build the app, validate the idea with the market, work out a business model, make a landing page for the product and pitch it to invited judges.

These are the apps the groups built.

1. Idemfy

Shoppers carry bulky wallets full of cards for every brand they are a member of. With Idemfy, the user picks the brands they want to subscribe to from a list and registers with each one by taking photos of themselves.

Whenever they buy something or make a transaction that earns reward points, the cashier or store staff scans their face through the app and the points go straight to their account.

The long-term plan is for the shopper's face to be their single ID whenever they buy goods, so they can say goodbye to rectangular pieces of plastic.

2. Mata

Mata is a web app that improves security in company buildings and makes employee attendance easier, more efficient and more accurate.

An employee entering the building takes a selfie through the app and is logged in to work automatically, so their face is their ID. The company no longer logs attendance by hand, the logs are more accurate, and the administration can monitor attendance better.

3. Foints

Team Foints built an app that records your loyalty points from your favourite brands without any cards. You take a picture of yourself when you register with a brand, and the cashier takes a photo of you each time you buy to verify who you are and give you the points. You can redeem rewards without carbon paper too.

4. FacePass

Our founders built a product for the hackathon too. Our CEO Dave and CTO Albert used facial recognition to make event registration easy.

With the FacePass web app, attendees pre-register for an event by uploading a recent photo of their face, which is added to their user profile, and the platform recognises them instantly. They walk happily into the event instead of waiting in line while an organiser searches for their name on a list.

FacePass also tracks attendee movements and uses that data to report on attendee engagement, so organisers can see what will make their next event a bigger success.

The apps are all still at the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage, but phew, #technology.

This is what we do at Symph. Whether it is an internal hackathon or a client project, we take every chance to learn and use new technology to build products with a purpose.

Our cross-functional teams of consultants, project managers, developers and designers take an idea and build an MVP quickly. We roll the MVP out to the product's users to get feedback on the user experience early, and we keep iterating on the feedback from every phase until we have built the right product to solve our client's problem.

"Hack" is one word in our ethos, and for us it has always meant using technology to improve how people live, how businesses operate and how the world works. It is on our walls and in our heads.

You can see more of our work here. If you have an idea you want to turn into reality, talk to us about it.