Inspiration
We noticed that many young people today are becoming increasingly inclined to prioritizing their physical well-being and creating a regular workout routine. However, many of them find themselves confronted with a universal predicament - an overwhelming lack of knowledge about where to start and what exercises would be most effective. The abundance of conflicting information on the internet makes research vexing and often fruitless. As a result, these spry minds long for direction and guidance in their fitness endeavors. They seek structured workout plans customized to their personal physiques, a system to help them keep track of their accomplishments, and motivation and guidance to help them achieve their desired results. This is where Varos comes in.
What it does
Varos caters to aiding the youth and millennials who have the desire to exercise, but are not yet familiar with the world of fitness. Our website allows users to input information about their conditions (e.g weight, age, sex, and goal(s). With this data it will generate a fitness program with workouts and diets catered directly to the user.
How we built it
We used HTML to create the basic design for the website and CSS to clean up the user interface. Python was used to do the backend development of our website. It imported the OpenAI API and read in values of user inputs for the HTML form.
Challenges we ran into
Firstly, all of our members had little to no experience in web development, having only taken at most one computer science course in highschool. The thought of figuring out how to use the OpenAI API initially left us with a lot of uncertainty, however, we shortly learned we could use it through Python. Later on though, we realized that our HTML file had to be linked to Python, and thought it was impossible, so we switched to Javascript. Javascript was a major learning curve because we had no prior knowledge of the language. After nearly successfully implementing the OpenAI API with Javascript, we learned that backend development existed, and that doing everything frontend was not optimal, so we switched back to Python, and learned about Flask.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Despite having no experience in web development, after looking at many online resources including books and videos, we were able to successfully code the base of our website using HTML and we were able to design it using CSS. We fought through the struggle of initially not knowing any back end. In the end, we prevailed and were able to tinker around and write backend code.
What we learned
We learned that it is important to brainstorm ideas of what you may want to do prior to attending a Hackathon, so that you can learn and familiarize yourself in the necessary languages and applications. Struggling to learn a new language, troubleshoot, and code the actual project is far too many tasks to complete in the allocated time period. We also learned about the workflow when coding with a group, rather than when you code a project on your own.
What's next for VAROS
We’re hoping to create a mobile app so that users can take their plan to the gym without the hassle of transferring it to personal notes. Additionally, a tiered subscription service will be added, higher paid plans will correspond with longer workout plans and more thorough diets. In order to create a more lasting experience we are hoping to turn the platform into an account based service.
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