Mirror

The Importance of Health

Mirror is a mobile application designed to provide personalized hair and skin care recommendations through AI-powered analysis. The inspiration behind Mirror stems from the recognition that many individuals struggle to find suitable hair and skincare products tailored to their specific health and hygiene needs.

Functionality

Mirror is built as a React Native mobile application, enabling users to capture photos of their face or hair, answer detailed questions about their hair characteristics (such as dandruff, dryness, and density) and receive personalized analyses and product recommendations. The app includes features such as bookmarking useful products.

Technical Architecture

Technically, Mirror utilizes React Native for cross-platform mobile development, Expo for handling camera access and file system operations, MongoDB for user data storage, a Node.js backend with Express for server-side operations, JWT for secure authentication, and transfer learning models to achieve high-accuracy analysis.

High-quality, scalable UI elements are ensured through SVG components, while custom animations enhance user experience during loading screens and transitions. However, the biggest component of our project was leveraging Gemini API alongside ResNet transfer model (ML) for the most accurate classification for skin and hair types to provide the utmost beneficial products.

Challenges

Throughout the development process, several challenges were encountered, including complexities in backend infrastructure setup for image processing while maintaining user privacy, achieving UI consistency across diverse screen sizes, which was resolved by switching from PNG-based navigation elements to SVG components.

Additional challenges included backend integration difficulties related to secure MongoDB connections and reliable API calls. The integration of machine learning models with the mobile application also presented unique challenges in terms of model size optimization and inference speed, which we solved through efficient transfer learning approaches and cloud-based processing.

Impact and Future Development

Future development plans for Mirror involve enhancing the application with more sophisticated AI analysis algorithms, expanding product recommendations, incorporating social sharing features, and introducing progress tracking capabilities over time.

The project has significantly advanced my expertise in full stack engineering and machine learning. Mirror demonstrates the potential of AI-powered personalization in the beauty and healthcare industry, showing how technology can make professional-level advice accessible to everyone.