EarnIt

Inspiration

In today’s digital age, the pervasive issue of distraction through endless, meaningless consumption on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube is becoming increasingly prevalent. Our goal is to raise awareness about the amount of time wasted mindlessly scrolling on these platforms. Understanding that these platforms thrive on this behavior, we created this extension to help users regain control over their time.

What it does

Our project is a Chrome extension that helps users break free from time-wasting websites. It acts as an intermediary between the user and unproductive sites, redirecting users to a more productive environment. Features include:

Blocking unproductive sites and redirecting users to engage in activities like pushups, pullups, meditation, or educational platforms such as Duolingo.
Users earn minutes by completing these productive activities, which can then be spent back on the blocked sites. This helps users stay motivated and productive while also maintaining control over their digital habits.
Users can link a 'productivity buddy' who is the only person that can bypass the blocked sites. This was our take on accountability, something we found that other similar concepts lacked.

How we built it

We developed our program using Javascript for the API calls and scripting, and HTML/CSS for the frontend. We utilised TensorFlows MoveNet body scanning API for real time motion tracking and deployed our project as a chrome extension.

Challenges we ran into

Solving the unproductive screen time problem: It was a challenge to create an experience that was both motivating and effective in breaking users' habits.
Linking the Chrome Extension to activity tracking: We initially tried to deploy our tracking system directly onto the chrome extension, but found that this violated Google's privacy policies. We ended up finding a way for our chrome extension to communicate with an external web-app through Chrome tokens on chrome local storage.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our technical accomplishments include:

Successfully implementing TensorFlows Movement body scanning API into our project.
Developing a Chrome Extension with minimal prior experience.
Finding a way to link an independent web-app with a chrome extension through token communication.

Community engagement:

User testing showing we successful created a meaning product that users have found helpful in reducing screen time that actually solves a prevalent issue (i've been using this extension quite regularly!)

What we learned

Technical:

Using new and more complicated APIs like TensorFlow
To help with the frontend, a team member learn the basics in just one day!
Video presentation: scripting, editing, public speaking

Community:

Understanding what the community wants by conducting interviews and addressing this directly
Exploring what other similar concepts missed and iterating for an even better take

What's next for EarnIt

We are excited about what our product can do for the community! We believe it will be a useful extension and hope to release it soon, as an open source project. We had some other special features that we wanted to implement as well, but couldn't due to the time restraints of a hackathon so stay tuned! Some of these included:

creating a community aspect by creating groups to keep track and interact with friends
activity guides and more variation in user input
more personalised statistics tracking progress over time