Problem Space
The Focus Space
In the modern attention economy, social media and other apps have made it hard to focus on the task at hand. We try to help people reclaim their minds by providing them with tools to measure and improve their focus, thereby helping them be more productive.
From a survey we sent out to 74 students and engineers at top institutions, we found that 91% wanted to improve their productivity. Many told us that they already used tools to improve their productivity, such website blockers, but we learned that these external tools are insufficient since 61% struggled with focus due to intrusive thoughts rather than external distractions like phone alerts. A deeper solution is required.
We tackle difficulties with focus at the stem of the problem: the brain. This helps people improve their thinking patterns. Unlike, say, a website blocker it does not just band-aid the focus problem, but tackles it directly. Current brain interfaces are insufficient because they are clunky and comical. Our solution is seamless.
Why A Wearable
The wearable allows us to directly measure the brain and tackle the core problems we encounter with focus in our society. From our survey we found that around half of the participants already used a wearable over 88% were comfortable with their biometric data being measured so long as it was kept secure (i.e. local). We intend to keep the data local for that reason. Nearly that amount (75%) were willing to use our wearable daily.
Why A Phone App
Aren't phone apps bad since they draw you to your phone? Isn't your phone distracting? These are good points, but we are targeting mainly internal lack of focus rather than external. Moreover, our survey participants heavily preferred a mobile app to a desktop app.
Are People Actually Interested?
Yes, out of our survey 89% percent thought about it one or more times a week with 57% of the total thinking about it at least once a day. Moreover, we saw that 11% were willing to pay up to $500, 32% were willing to pay up to $300, and 31% were willing to pay up to $100. Given that 39% of our participants were cash-poor students (by pigeonhole) we inferred that the demand must be fairly big if they are willing to pay that much.
What it does
Using EEG sensors, we measure brainwaves coming from the brain. We identify whether you are productive or not and provide you with two components: a real-time haptic buzzer to nudge you back to focus, and an app that helps you track your progress and optimize your focus using retrospective analytics.
How we built it
3D printed along with open source hardware. We built a phone app (react native), embedded client (python) and server (python).
Challenges we ran into
Minicontroller compatibility, model (that senses whether you are focused or not) accuracy.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Live feed of brainwaves on the in app screen. A nudge when you are distracted. A calendar view to help you track what places and times you were most focused during.
What's next for Cerebra
Gather larger datasets to drive ML learnings to provide better feedback to the user to optimize focus. We also want better back-end and front-end features
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