FocusX | Devpost

Welcome Screen
Distractions
Focus - Disabled
Focus - Enabled
Choose Distractions

Inspiration

We were inspired heavily by our own experiences. Everytime we wanted to work on a website or watch online physics lectures on youtube, something or the other kept being a distraction which led to very poor productivity and hence, frustration. We wanted a solution and we looked up online but there was nothing similar to what we wanted to achieve. This created an inspiration for us to create a chrome extension that could solve our problems and accomplish exactly what we want.

We also took inspiration from a non-random sample survey we conducted among our classmates. one out of every three person struggled from low productivity due to social media apps. We were determined to provide a solution that addressed the challenges, ultimately driving us to create FocusX, a comprehensive tool for heightened productivity and improved focus.

What it does

FocusX is a browser extension that lets you remove all distractions and Focus on your work. It blocks the websites from 5 broad categories namely Memes and Funny Images, Online Shopping, News, Sports, Gaming. It has a button that blocks access to websites in the selected categories during signup.

How we built it

Brainstorm Phase: The first phase of this extension was brainstorming the idea. To do this we researched different problems and used the inspiration discussed previously. Once we had our initial idea of creating a platform to help tackle procrastination, we decided to get to work right away on developing it.

Developing Phase: The extension was developed using ReactJS, Webpack, and TailwindCSS. For more inquiries regarding our code check out our GitHub repo linked below and feel free to message us!

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a few challenges in both the brainstorming and development phase of the extension. We also had a little trouble creating the video but overall we learned a lot not just about using time efficiently, but how to fully brainstorm and implement a solution to an existing problem and create videos! There was multiple times when we got stuck on a minor bug and didn't notice it until a lot of time passed by.

Additionally, This was my first time creating a chrome extension so I faced difficulty everytime I thought of adding something new. I enjoyed this overall experience and I am hoping to learn from my mistakes in order to perform better in future.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of our entire solution as we feel that it is definitely something that is realistic and could be used to help people in the real world. (It’s just cool to think that real people could actually utilize a solution we brainstormed!). We are really happy that we were able to create an extension in such a short amount of time as that was definitely a tough part of our hack. We are also really proud of the video we produced as it was difficult to put all our thoughts into such a short video.

What we learned

We learned a lot about making videos and developing chrome extensions during this hackathon.

What's next for FocusX

We will continue to add more and more websites to our database to help everyone reach their true productivity potential!! Additionally we are planning to use ML or AI to analyze a website's contents and block the website based on that instead of using a pre-selected dataset. We are also planning to add a timer feature, A full-focus mode that blocks everything other than user selected exceptions.