FitZ

Inspiration

Our app is focused on the topic of Health and Wellness. Through primary research, we noticed that existing social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, are not primarily designed for people who want to keep track of their physical activity, find motivation from other people's fitness schedules, and connect to people with a similar interest in fitness. As a result, people who wish to have an active lifestyle do not receive enough motivation to actually pursue their passion. This is how we were inspired to develop FitZ, a social media app that allows users to track their own physical activity, as well as other people’s physical activity. Through this app, we are trying to create a fitness profile which allows people to show their fitness lifestyle. The postings on this fitness app can make users accountable for their routines. People who use FitZ and view what other people do for exercise can use that knowledge to motivate themselves to exercise and develop a variety of routines.

What it does

When a user installs FitZ for the first time, the user can sign up for an account by entering information such as email address, username, password, first and last names, age, weight, and height. When the user logs in the app, he or she is directed to a homepage which shows a real-time feed of posts made by people that the user follows. When the specified user appears, the user can follow that user in order to see the other user’s posts in the user’s feed by tapping the “Follow” button. The user can also unfollow the specified user by tapping the same button. When the user taps the workout icon, he or she is directed to a stopwatch, which the user would use to determine how long his or her physical exercise lasted. After the user hits “Stop,” the user is prompted to enter additional information about the workout before making a post about it. The post contains the time spent on exercise and the additional information that the user entered, as well as the user’s username.

How we built it

We first designed the structure of the app on paper using UML diagrams. We figured out how many activities we needed, and how many features we needed to add to make it work. We then created mock-ups of each screen on paper. We then divided the tasks and assigned different activities to each other. After we were done with these activities, we tried to link them up together in one android studio and compile it. The actual app was built using Android Studio, and Google Firebase was used as a database for storing all of the users’ accounts and retrieving information.

Challenges we ran into

Two of us were new to Android Studio, so we initially struggled in developing .xml files and connecting Java objects to those files. Our team consisted of only three people, so it took us more time to do the tasks than if our team had four people. If we had a fourth person, we would have developed this app further. By working on Android studio for the first time, we grasped a lot of information and learned a lot of skills like making activities, linking them, running them through a mobile device, and debugging code through the mobile device. Even though this all seemed difficult at first, we gradually got a hold on it. Also, we faced some difficulty in developing the homepage and stopwatch for the app. For the homepage, we wanted to show a real-time feed which required the use of a ListView controller. This controller window had to be hardcoded in order for it to work properly. We ran into some “Resource ID” issues and syntax errors. We also used a friend’s phone for debugging since the phones we had were not connecting. We are grateful to our friend who let us borrow us his phone for the entire hackathon. However, since the wire was broken, our phone would sometimes disconnect while testing. In the end, we were able to overcome all challenges, and we learned a lot because of these challenges.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of finishing an app that is fully functional in the 24 hours that were allocated to us for hacking. Some of the accomplishments we are especially proud of are developing the stopwatch and the homepage, and using Google Firebase to retrieve real-time data.

What we learned

We learned how to use Android Studio for the first time to develop a mobile fitness app. We learned how to use Google Firebase for authentication purposes and database retrieval. We recently learned about the Google APIs such as Cloud Video Intelligence, and we plan on working with them in the future. We also learned about some amazing companies such as Kool Technologies and Joyrun, and what they do in the technology industry. This hackathon was an amazing learning experience, as well as an entertaining one.

What's next for FitZ

There is definitely a lot of scope for development in this mobile application. In the future, we will try to implement exercising competitions for users to participate in. These competitions would increase motivation and excitement among users. We also plan to add the image/video features so that the users can populate their posts with multimedia and give other users some visual aid for the fitness routines. We also plan to use Cloud Video Intelligence from Google Cloud Platform to have users film their exercise and have the app detect what exercise the user was doing. The Cloud Vision Intelligence from Google Platform can also be used in detecting the food pictures and their calories and ingredients when the users upload certain pictures in their post. We are also thinking of adding another feature in the app which allows users to access an organization’s page and their users’ data, such as the Breast Cancer Society for breast cancer patients. Through this app, they can stay connected to people of the same organization as them, and how they managed to cope with their challenges and have active lifestyles. They could also form groups to exercise together if they are in nearby locations.

Built With

• android-studio
• google-firebase