ReplACE it!

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Inspiration

Our team of four female students began chatting about our common shared struggles in our professional lives. As university students who are all beginning our professional careers, we discussed how common it is for women to say things like “I just…”, “I hope that’s ok”, “no worries if not”, and saying “sorry” many times when an apology is definitely unnecessary. Additionally, the word "Guys" is an easygoing way to address a group of people, but to many, it’s a symbol of exclusion—a word with an originally male meaning that is frequently used to refer to people who don’t consider themselves "guys." ReplACE it suggests alternatives to the word "guys" instead- by using "y'all" or "everyone" instead.

What it does

We built a Chrome Extension that replaces certain non-assertive phrases for assertive phrases:

This is just not a good idea guys sorry -> This is not a good idea everyone thank you I'm sorry I'm always late -> Thank you for waiting for me I'm sorry for being so sensitive -> Thank you for being accepting of me I'm sorry I always mess up -> Thank you for being patient with me No problem/no worries -> Always happy to help! I think maybe we should... -> It'd be best if we... Ah sorry, my bad -> Nice catch! Thanks for letting me know Hey guys -> Hey everyone Ladies and Gentlemen -> everyone

How we built it

Although we considered various Natural Language Processing techniques, we decided on using a search and cascading conditional statements with HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

What we learned

Unfortunately, we came to the realization that many individuals suffer from using less assertive language in their personal and professional lives due to fear of being perceived of as "pushy" or "aggressive". But, we were able to identify this pain point and work together on creating a solution for everyone!