Inspiration
When thinking about project ideas, we elected to choose the healthcare track due to its timeless relevance in our day-to-day lives. The project also had a personal connection, due to a members family experience. The member's dad had gotten severe shoulder issues due to sitting at his desk for long periods of time without stretching or standing up. This greatly affected his quality of life, yet could have easily been mitigated by simple stretches. We therefore decided to use this hardship as inspiration to develop a technology that would help the increasing number of people obtaining more sedentary jobs, particularly desk jobs. According to Johns Hopkins, "physically active jobs now make up less than 20% of the U.S. workforce, down from roughly half of jobs in 1960". This demonstrates how our product addresses a problem that can affect a wide variety of industries. Whether it's for a small start-up or a large corporation, maintaining the health of employees is vital to long-term success.
What it does
Our Chrome extension is made to ensure that you get the breaks you need. A built-in timer comes up and only counts down when it can confidently confirm that the user is participating in the stretches. The user get the physical benefits of taking a break, which mitigates the risks with long periods of sitting. It also serves as a gentle reminder to get up and take a walk or simply take a break from work, which is essential for productivity. In fact, according to DeskTime, productivity tends to decline after 52 minutes of continuous work, highlighting just how needed these regular breaks are.
How we built it
We built GetOffLocalHost by weaving several key components together into a cohesive system. First, we set up a camera for body tracking, then developed a lightweight Flask microframework to host the Chrome extension. We decided to forego a heavy front-end framework, opting instead for vanilla JavaScript to handle all interactions and CSS for styling.
Challenges we ran into
While building the app, we faced challenges, particularly with the limitations of the body-tracking software. Initially, we considered using generative AI, but quickly realized it would overcomplicate the process. Our approach required us to fine-tune the body-tracking software to accurately detect parts of the body and differentiate between real exercise movements and casual, non-exercise motion. This proved to be a difficult task to accomplish from scratch, however we were able to effectively leverage the resources available to us to simplify implementation. Another challenge was adapting the program to function in a Google Chrome extension. Due to Google's strict requirements, a lot of research had to be carried to understand what changes were needed for a clean integration.
What we learned
Over the course of the weekend, we developed not only as hackers but as people. Being our first datathon and new to each other we were all in unfamiliar territory, however we learned to tackle our challenges as a team. Our ideation process was compromised of lively discussions and the exploration of new ideas which was fueled by the presence of unique perspectives. Engaging in the community activities and workshops allowed us to realize that even in a competitive setting, one shouldn't be afraid to take inspiration from others.
What's next for GetOffLocalHost
Next, we want to create more personalized recommendations based on user data and feedback to tailor the experience to individual needs. For example, if the user has existing back pain, we would include more back stretches to ensure that the user gets relief when needed. We also want to increase the versatility of the project by integrating it with mobile platforms.
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