Intention

With the dramatic shift to a virtual environment, keeping focus during a lecture has never been harder. With Intention, we hope to create a simple extension that helps you stay focused without stress.

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Inspiration

Our inspiration came from the community we are a part of - College Students. The transition from in-person to an online environment had a dramatic impact on our focus. There are so many potential distractions, such as YouTube, Twitch, and social media to name a few. At some point, I was distracted so frequently, Alt+Tab became a habit after 10 minutes of lecture. Thus, we decided to create a fix for this, utilizing something that is known as the 20 second rule.

This was a concept that I read about from Thomas Frank, which claimed it took a certain amount of "activation energy" to perform a task. By making adding or removing 20 seconds, one can increase/decrease the "activation energy" that it costs to start a task.

What it does

This chrome extension provides a 20 second popup when "focus mode" is on and a switch to a chrome browser/window occurred. On top of this, we provide a motivational quote to return to studying, 10 min drink/stretch reminders, and supplemental links to maintain your focus. We hope that this will give you some thought on "do I really need to go to this site". If the answer is no, you switch back to the lecture (now with white noise/instrumentals in the background), but if the answer is yes, wait 20 seconds.

How we built it

Using Atom and VS code, we coded it using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. For our debugger, we actively used chrome to test our extension. Finally, we used many references, from Linkedin Learning, to stack overflow to solve and diagnose our issues. Also, big shoutout to all of the mentors who helped us! The advice that was given progressed our product by leaps and bounds.

Challenges we ran into

Both of us didn't know how to do any sort of web development whatsoever. Thus, we had to learn on the spot while coding at the same time. Not only that, but we needed to get used to collaborating via GitHub, as both of us only used it several times before. Also, since this was my first hackathon, I was unexperienced on how to best approach the project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are just glad that we created a "functional" webpage. Since we had no prior experience, this in and of itself is an accomplishment. Also, I'm very proud of the idea. It is an idea that I would love to have in my life, and I hope that it'll make the lives of others better too.

What we learned

JavaScript, HTML, Git/Github, and CSS.

What's next for Intention

We hope that we can expand to applications and mobile rather than just chrome. Once that is accomplished, we may add something to help with sleep, as that is one of the environmental factors that causes people to become distracted during lecture!

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