Exercise Finder

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  Skill Icon

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  Body Diagram

Inspiration

Being stuck in self-isolation, we have been spending time looking for exercise resources to help maintain fitness. Creating your own workout plan involves having to look up exercises that match your equipment and what parts of your body you want to focus on. We realised that this whole process could be greatly simplified by using Alexa as your personal training coach, giving you educated recommendations on what exercises to do.

What it does

Alexa will recommend you exercises based on the body part you want to strengthen and the equipment you have available. Further, given your specifications, Alexa can create a to-do list of exercises for a workout session. If you want to learn more about an exercise, or do not know how to do it, just ask Alexa, and she will provide simple instructions.

How we built it

We used the Python ASK SDK for the Alexa backend, in combination with the wger Workout Manager API to provide the exercise information. Further, we used the Alexa list management API to implement the workout lists.

Challenges we ran into

We encountered problems implementing request handlers for the Alexa Conversation API using Python, as most learning resources catered to Node.js. To overcome this, we had to spend a lot of time really getting to know how to debug Alexa skills, via the test simulator and Amazon CloudWatch. Although it brought much frustration, it was ultimately a great learning experience on troubleshooting.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• We are proud of our skill. It was the first self-made Alexa skill (not following a tutorial).
• We are proud of our systematic and methodical thinking when it came to solving bugs, as many of them were undocumented, given how new Alexa Conversations is.

What we learned

• How to create user-friendly interaction models
• How to plan out happy paths and handle their deviations.
• How to think about designing an auditory application, in contrast to a visual one (on a screen).

What's next for Exercise Finder

We would love to implement stretch recommendations, full workout plans (including the duration/amount of each exercise) and more intuitive instruction, whether that is through augmenting exercise descriptions to cater to an auditory medium, or providing more insightful visual media.

Built With

• alexa-list-management-api
• python
• wger-workout-manager