Work House

Problem Statement

What are some alternate ways we can continue to effectively engage the public about the need for decent housing worldwide amidst the pandemic?

Inspiration

Conventional campaigns, with advertisements and their calls to action, seem to be hitting their limits of user engagement in the digital world. Perhaps this unfortunate pandemic was another grim reminder of the eminent need for better, more modern ways to engage the audience. Our team was looking for ways to effectively engage a user demographic that had the ability and the motivation to work for our cause. Our user research showed that many people who are open to the idea of volunteering, don’t volunteer presently. We found our answer in fitness apps. Fitness is a huge industry and as such a huge untapped well of resources.

What it does

Workhouse helps its users repurpose their workouts for a better cause. Users track their workout on Workhouse - type of exercise, and duration. At the end of every workout session, they get to see the number of calories they have burnt, along with other useful statistics like heart rate maps and comparison against well-established averages. But that's not all. Workhouse encourages its users to donate and volunteer at the end of every single workout. Our message is simple: we tell you the real-life impact your workout can have. Your daily jogging route could be burning the same number of calories it takes to fix the roof of a family at risk. Expressing housing shortage as directly achievable bite-sized goals will help our users feel a lot more in control and confident about the impact of their contributions. With every such session, the user progresses through different milestones, each marked by an NFT we mint specifically for them. Workhouse is the best new reason to complete your workout goals, and help out at the same time

Value proposition

Workhouse works at the intersection of two domains; domains that are distinct to others, but we found a way to link them!
Our idea is brand new and has no expiry date. People aren’t stopping caring about their health anytime soon, and so our utility is potentially infinite.
The recurring messages are also more persuasive than any standalone poster or ad could ever be.
Our app also attracts users who would like to venture into web3.0 by giving them easy access to NFTs by removing several barriers to entry.

How we built it

Our team built the presented prototype using React, and firebase. The users can log in with their Google account, and we can create an account for them on our own database so the user’s data persist between logins. The user can then start a workout session, at the end of which we present a mock-up of the message the user would actually see. The user sees the number of calories burnt in the session, the options to donate or volunteer, and the effect that an equivalent effort would have in the efforts to ensure decent housing for all.

Challenges we ran into

With the limited time frame, we could only produce a web app which itself is only a prototype of the app we envision. Connecting to the Google Fitness API was another big hurdle, as the verification process for OAuth2 for apps in production itself takes quite a while.