The Grounds

The Grounds is specially designed for individuals with Parkinson's disease to practice and maintain fine motor skills through enjoyable, interactive drawing activities.

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Inspiration

Our inspiration for The Grounds came from a deeply personal place.
One of our team members, Shriya, watched her grandfather live with Parkinson’s disease and struggle with daily tasks that once brought him joy—like writing and drawing.
Traditional therapy exercises often felt clinical and discouraging, but art always made him smile.

We wanted to build something that restores that sense of joy and agency—turning rehabilitation into creativity.
The Grounds is our way of helping people with Parkinson’s, tremors, or limited motor function find confidence again through art.

What it does

The Grounds is a Progressive Web App (PWA) that transforms art therapy into an adaptive, creative experience.
It helps people with fine motor challenges strengthen their control and coordination through drawing and coloring exercises designed by AI.

  • Users choose a theme (for example, “flowers,” “dogs,” or “mountains”)
  • Our AI prompt enhancer (Cloudflare Worker + Llama 3) adjusts complexity based on past drawing accuracy
  • Gemini generates simple black-and-white coloring pages with bold, traceable lines
  • Users can trace or color, with optional line correction and accuracy measurement
  • Progress and metrics (time, accuracy, projects) are stored locally and visualized through an accessible dashboard

The Grounds encourages steady-hand practice, confidence, and creativity—all in a calming, judgment-free environment.

How we built it

Frontend

  • Built as a Progressive Web App using React and TypeScript
  • Optimized for iPad and stylus input, with offline support and installable PWA features
  • Custom drawing canvas with independent trace and color layers, adjustable pen size, pressure sensitivity, and a circular color picker
  • Whimsical, accessible UI inspired by coloring books using the Lexend font and a soft pastel palette

Backend

  • Flask API manages user sessions, performance metrics, and generated artwork
  • Cloudflare Worker with @cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct dynamically rewrites prompts based on user accuracy and feedback
  • Gemini Flash 2.0 generates the adaptive coloring pages in 4:3 line-art format
  • Gemini Flash 2.5 generates personalized words of encouragement for the user, based on past performance

Full Stack

  • Docker Compose for containerized application for use across any device and environment

Data Flow

User input → Cloudflare prompt enhancer → Gemini image generation → Canvas → Flask metrics storage → Personalized feedback.

Challenges we ran into

  • Balancing accessibility and aesthetics—designing an interface that feels fun, not clinical, while still usable for users with tremors
  • Prompt tuning—ensuring AI-generated coloring pages stayed simple, traceable, and emotionally uplifting
  • Integrating multiple AI systems (Cloudflare + Gemini) while maintaining low latency
  • Managing canvas layers and accuracy tracking while keeping the UI responsive
  • Ensuring that accuracy feedback encourages users without discouraging creativity

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a fully functional adaptive PWA in under 24 hours
  • Created an AI-driven feedback loop that personalizes every new coloring page
  • Designed a non-clinical, joyful interface for therapy-oriented art practice
  • Made the app fully browser-based, installable, and usable offline
  • Most importantly, we honored Shriya’s grandfather’s story by creating something that could help others like him

What we learned

  • Accessibility must be emotional as well as functional—users need encouragement as much as precision
  • AI prompt design can itself be therapeutic; the right phrasing changes how users experience creativity
  • Combining adaptive AI with human-centered design makes rehabilitation feel more personal
  • Building a PWA allows therapy tools to be lightweight, device-agnostic, and widely accessible

What's next for The Grounds

We’re continuing development with these goals:

  • Personalized rehabilitation profiles that evolve over time using local data
  • Refined image upload and handwriting-tracing features for therapy exercises
  • Doctor and therapist dashboards for progress tracking and sharing results
  • Expanded AI models to better adapt scenes to individual strengths and challenges
  • Deeper PWA integration for offline sessions, caching, and native-like usability
  • Partnerships with rehabilitation clinics to pilot The Grounds with real patients

Our vision is to make The Grounds a space where therapy meets creativity—
a place where every line, no matter how shaky, still tells a story.

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