ScrubAlert: Hand Washing Step Reminders

Home Screen with User Settings
UI Supports 20+ Languages
20 second timer and more app pages
Artwork for the Project
Simple and unobtrusive notifications

Story

ScrubAlert is a free, non-profit utility that reminds you to wash your hands after you've taken a specified number of steps. Wanting to help in some small way with the global pandemic, my aim was to build a simple utility that would encourage more frequent hand washing habits. I found myself struggling to build a consistent routine with my own hand washing and began using timers to remind myself to wash. I then realized step count is a far more effective estimator of bacterial exposure than a simple timer.

How it Works

Specify a number of steps and ScrubAlert will alert you whenever you've exceed the threshold, reminding you it's time to wash your hands. The user controls whether they get a subsequent reminder or if they'd like to delay their scrub session. An instructional video from the CDC is displayed to help reinforce good hygiene practices, and a twenty second timer walks you through the wash.

Development

I built the app in ionic using Cordova plugins for pedometer, background fetch and local notifications. The greatest challenge and biggest point of pride was to minimize battery impact, - querying the built in pedometer only during a background fetch event. This is extremely performant compared to other alternatives tested. Translating and localizing nearly 30 languages took a great deal of time, but I felt it essential given the nature of the pandemic.

What's Next

Being fully open source, I hope that ScrubAlert can be appreciated for having other applications -- reminding yourself to hydrate after step intervals for example. I also hope to expand the list of supported languages from nearly 30 to well over 40 shortly, and release the Android version within a few days.