Inspiration
I had been a serious procrastinator when it came to maintaining my health. Instead of going out for some exercise, I would always prefer "lying-around" activities at home, thus rarely working out. But this attitude led me to some serious health problems. Not only did my body become less active, but also my stamina and endurance power significantly decreased. My speed was slow and I could barely run a mile. But then one day I casually enrolled in a 5K (5000m) race, and that's when the magic started happening. As the race date came near, I actually stopped procrastinating. Call it the time pressure or just the strong will to save myself from potential embarrassment in the race. But whatever maybe the reason, the important thing is, I STOPPED PROCRASTINATING. So one problem solved. But as I started running, I realized there were some big problems remaining even after the procrastination:
- I was doing everything haphazardly. Some days I would tire myself out with extreme running, other days I would run much less than my capabilities.
- I had no idea what diet I should take as per the amount of my physical activity.
Here came the inspiration for GoRun. We aim to improve people's health by providing all round suggestions based on user performance.
What it does
User starts off by taking a challenge- Enroll in a race (5K, half marathon, marathon) as per your level. This will provide the user with sufficient motivation and thrill to stop procrastinating and start running. The race listings are all integrated within the app, where the race data has been pulled from link. Once the user is enrolled and the race date has been recorded within the app, the user can move on to our core functionality- Run. The user starts running and the app streamlines the running process by providing suggestions based on the running performance. The suggestions include: 1. Diet suggestions 2. Exercise & Training suggestions 3. Miscellaneous suggestions
How we built it
We have strongly focused on the UI/UX elements, which was very important so that the user does not revert back to his procrastination ways. The design has been gamified to increase user engagement. All of the designs were custom made by Rishabh.
We have developed a hybrid app using Ionic and AngularJS, built on Cordova. We have utilized the GPS technology of the cellphone to calculate the distance traveled by the user. We implemented facebook and twitter login using their REST apis.
User Suggestions are based on the following detailed study:
- AgeGradeScore: (The record time of a particular track/ user's time to complete the track) * 100 If the user covers less distance than the whole track, the formula is accordingly weighted. Comparisons are drawn between an avg. runner and the record runner to make a smart decisions of your standing.
The data pulled is highly accurate, and has been compiled from thousands of races around the globe.
Age grade tables: link Average running data: link
- Your age group, distance covered and the avg. speed play a big role in suggestions
Challenges we ran into
Compiling the huge amount of data into manageable chunks to provide meaningful suggestions was a big challenge. The suggestions part was painstakingly researched and compiled from various resources. Doing this in a short span of 30 hours made it much more challenging!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Overall this app is something we are sincerely proud of. I will list down a few milestones our team achieved:
- Building an addictive GUI, making it super intuitive and fun to use so as to avoid succumbing to procrastination
- Our largely useful research output to analyze running data
What we learned
- Creating intuitive gif's and other UI elements
- Better development in Ionic and Cordova
- Implementing login social media api's
What's next for GoRun
GoRun has the potential to be a HUGE product. It taps into the large market of procrastinators who just can't start off running. All of the apps that are currently in the market either don't provide quality suggestions or are paid. No app provides a gamified UX to keep user engaged so that he doesn't revert back to procrastination. So people usually stop using these apps within a week. GoRun takes care of these shortcomings. There is still a lot of polishing needed for this app and we hope to publish it on the app-stores in near future.
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