Brain Break

Sitting for hours on end not only jeopardizes your physical health but also mental health, so try taking a BrainBreak

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What is the Problem ?

        As the usage of technology increases, we believe that humans are starting to neglect their own health, both mental and physical. Careers in the field of technology often lead to sedentary lifestyles, and as students, we too spend a majority of our time on electronic devices. This lack of exercise deprives the brain of oxygen and can potentially lead to mental illnesses such as ADHD, depression, dementia, anxiety, etc
        You would be surprised to know that 1 in every 4 people have a mental illness; that's over 450 million people worldwide. Mental problems are much more common in the work place than people may think. A study done by the Harvard Medical School shows that over 20% of employees aged from 18 to 54 have experienced symptoms of mental illnesses just in the last month. Many employees are scared to tell their managers about work related stress for fear of getting of fired. As a result of this several mental illnesses go by untreated, therefore worsening as time goes on. But, by taking brain breaks, you are devoting more time to taking care of yourself, which helps to improve self-esteem, and overall mental-health.

Inspiration

         After going to college, we witnessed many students get so wrapped up in working and studying that they often forgot to take care of their body, mind, and soul. These students may no longer have the support system of family and friends that they had prior to leaving home to remind them to maintain a healthy lifestyle. A plate full with studying and homework causes students to spend most of their day sitting or lying in bed, leaving them feeling uninspired and less productive as time passes. Two of our members had experienced this firsthand, and shared what they felt about the subject, and we decided this was going to be the social issue we would try and solve.

What it does

         BrainBreak combats this issue by suggesting personalized activities that are scientifically proven to improve one's mood and encourage positivity, such as stretches, guided meditation, and breathing exercises. There have been several studies done showing that taking a few minutes away from a strenuous task to relax the mind and body will lead to having a positive outlook, sleeping better at night, as well as sharper memory, therefore lowering the chances of being diagnosed with a mental illness. We also aim to add certain features such as connecting our app to snap chat allowing users to post their well-being-streak, or even make friends through the app. In addition to the snapchat feature, we will unquestionably be using Twilio (in the future) in order to text/remind the user to do their exercise after every certain time interval. The time interval as well as the level of difficulty will be customized according to the user's preferences.

How we built it

          In order to build the app, BrainBreak, we used Android Studio, and in the future we would be using the Twilio API for text message notifications and SnapKit for making the app more friendly and encouraging to the user. The language we mainly used was Java, but in the future, using Firebase as a database to store user information, we would be using Python.

Challenges we ran into

           In the beginning of this hackathon, none of our team members had any experience working with Android Studio. Throughout the day we had to learn from various websites and mentors as well as some other girls who had previous experience. Another challenge that we faced was when the login/register button went back to home screen when clicked. We spent hours on end, trying to figure out where we had made the mistake. An unexpected obstacle came our way when the 2 college members on our time had to leave, so we had to finish the app in limited time by ourselves. Despite all these challenges, we persevered and tried to jump over the obstacles as they came.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

        Some accomplishments that we're proud of about this hackathon is that we learned how to program an app from scratch despite never being able to do this before. This was a first time for all the members on our team, and we made it work (mostly) :) . The next major accomplishment that we're proud of is completing the major aspects of the app by ourselves despite the more experienced members leaving. Being a middle schooler and creating an app to this depth was very cool! Knowing that we could actually help people who struggle mentally was awesome and beyond our imaginations!

What we learned

        At the very beginning, none of us knew how to code in the Android Studio program, so we had to learn from scratch so that we could create our app in the program. Instead of giving up, and creating a website, we decided to make it a learning experience and research from several websites and magazines, including StackFlow. The demo that you will be seeing today also will not be possible without the help from the speakers in the workshops throughout the day. Last, we learned how to keep pushing through obstacles, especially when the two oldest college members of our team had to leave, and we had to finish the app by ourselves.

What's next for BrainBreak

       We aim to add certain features such as connecting our app to snap chat allowing users to post their well-being-streak, or even make friends through the app. In addition to the snapchat feature, we will be using Twilio in order to text/remind the user to do their exercise after every certain time interval. The time interval as well as the level of difficulty will be customized according to the user's preferences. We would also be integrating Firebase from the Google Cloud to store all user information. We would also love to continue and share this project with users around the world.

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