Stop the Pulse(Using popups to stop impulse purchases)

Inspiration

My inspiration mainly stemmed from past projects I have seen with captchas, and the effectiveness of captchas. I have also always wanted to make a chrome extension so I decided that doing this competition would help me understand the process and the framework of doing so. This project was also a cool way to get into Javascript.

What it does

Stop the Pulse aims to stop impulse buying. In my Utopia, I would like to have more money and be stress free from worrying about money. My app Stop the Pulse gives me the chance to get one step closer to having more money, thus completing one branch on my utopia. Stop the Pulse works by checking if you are on a checkout page, and if so it sends you 3 random games that you need to complete. My hope is that by distracting you for a bit you realize that maybe you don't really need these items.

How we built it

Stop the Pulse is mainly built with Javascript, with the addition of CSS and HTML. Javascript was used for the logic of the games, as well as the scrapping of prices for the maze and questioning popups. HTML and CSS were used for styling and the formatting of the popups. Some imports that were leveraged are Google Fonts and the Bulma CSS framework. The code is organized into 3+ main functions which run the maze, math, and price questioning game. An outside function is used to reload and choose the next game randomly.

Challenges we ran into

One major challenge that I ran into was the overlapping of getting the scrapped prices from different websites. This took the longest to fix because of the amount of scrapping and navigation that had to be done through the rows. For this challenge I used Claude to help, but then I was able to find out why it wasn't working and used Claude to help me write the code for the fix. I had to use Claude because I have never done Javascript before. I decided that the best decision would use Claude to speed up the process and act as my second partner.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One accomplishment I am really proud of is actually getting everything to work and being able to submit my first hackathon. This project took multiple all nighters to fix major bugs and try to figure out the best way to do UI, so it feels so good to see everything finally come together. I am also really proud of the little features such as you not being able to go back if you get a question wrong. Finally, I am very proud of myself for going headfirst into learning Javascript and learning some its operators such as the fat arrow and the && symbols, and learning basic syntax.

What we learned

Again , I learned a lot about Javascript when doing this project. As a Python developer, going into trying Javascript for the first time, I have found a lot of shortcuts that Javascript has that make everything easier. One operator is the fat arrow operator(=>). This operator gives you the chance to simplify your code by making it so instead of writing this "var time = function(a,b) { return a*b;};"(this of course would be indented) into "var time= (a,b) => a*b;" Having this in python would make a lot of things much easier. I also learned some Javascript syntax for if statements such as a || b = a or b, a && b = a and b are truthy values, and a === b = a and b are exactly the same. One big thing I learned that is used all throughout the code is "document.getElementById()" which can interact with HTML components in the code, and '.EventListener()' is used to see if a button is clicked.

What's next for Stop the Pulse(Using popups to stop impulse purchases)

The next steps for Stop the Pulse are adding every website and making sure the scrapping works perfectly, adding a better UI design, using scientifically proven ways to stop impulse buying and putting it into a game, and adding small pixel graphics here and there. With these changes being added, Stop the Pulse would be even better than it is now.

Built With

• brain
• bulma
• claude
• css
• food
• google
• googlefonts
• hands
• html
• javascript
• javascript-docmentation
• nosleep
• pixilart
• research
• youtube