Lose It To Win It

Inspiration

We are always looking for a way to better our lifestyles and specifically through our health. In our past experiences, fitness applications have not worked well, as we have to go through several confusing steps and mobile applications to work on different subjects like tracking diet or finding workouts. Through several fitness applications, our team had an issue with the aesthetics and did not favor the interface, due to the complexity. We wanted a more versatile mobile application that gave more options in the tasks performed. In all, we wanted a new, better, and well-rounded weight loss mobile application.

What it does

Our vision is to create a health-based mobile application with a simple interface, allowing for easy usability. We hope to provide ways to incorporate several options to better the lifestyle of our users, such as incorporating diet plans that work with the client’s personal attributes (age, height, and weight), a way to track hydration intake, and a calendar for workouts. With our application, it will allow users to have a better, healthier life and thus, creating a better tomorrow for them and their futures.

How I built it

The “Lose It To Win It” mobile application was built through the website code.com and we incorporated two different languages which were JavaScript and HTML. We decided to ask for the user’s input for their personal information including weight, height, age, and gender. All of this information is attained in order to provide adequate research done on the topic of weight loss regarding their input. We then direct the user to the home page which has four different tabs which are named home, diet, hydration, and schedule. We also used w3schools.com as a prominent reference in our app. We used google images for the tab icons and snipping tool for copying and pasting a chart onto the dietary tab of the app.

Challenges I ran into

At the start of the hackathon, both members of the team had not developed a central idea into our project. We formed a team, as we were looking for people to contribute with, being both new to a hackathon. Our team had little experience with coding in general, and it brought many great challenges. At first, our plan was to create a mobile application with Xcode. However, we began to understand the time constraints and the complexity we would need to overcome, in order to effectively perform our vision. By 3 AM, we decided to switch over to android and using Java, as one of the members had experience in it. Unfortunately, the Android Developer application took a considerable time to download and hindered our performance. In addition, the other member did not have as much experience in Java, which created difficulty in working together. At the last 7 hours, we decided to use code.com and base the application on HTML and javascript, which both of us had experience. Due to our lack of acquaintance with coding, we struggled with performing tasks, such as creating buttons and a calendar or linking all the pages together. These challenges delayed our time, but we were able to manage them.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Through our time at the hackathon, we are proud of our growth from creating our health application. We have grown in our character to work with others at stressful times and our coding skills. We are proud to have grown in our STEM experience and began new friendships. Though we had great struggles throughout the hacking, we have overcome our challenges in the end. Lastly, we are both incredibly proud of our accomplishment in participating in our first hackathon!

What I learned

We learned and deepened our knowledge in mobile app development, as well as coding in general. We learned to persevere on and never give up on an idea. As our program was not completely as we envisioned, we learned to start simple and work our way up.

What's next for Lose It To Win It

Next is that the creators will continue to pursue STEM-related activities. This being that we will try to further develop the application, as we grow in our skills in programming. The hackathon is only the beginning of our coding experience, and we will continue to progress and increase it. The hackathon was greatly memorable and an experience that makes us want to continue to do more. We hope to continue participating at hackathons and continue participating in STEM. Hopefully one of us will be here next year!

Built With

• code.com
• html5
• javascript