Check-In Chicken!
Inspiration
Given the circumstances of the world right now, mental health is steadily being ignored. This is especially bad with students. So we developed a relatively unobtrusive way of checking in with yourself, your mental health, and the world, all while being productive!
What it does
We developed a Chrome Extension that helps you stay on task for certain set "focus times" and gives you free time for timed breaks, as well as a "mental health vibe check" in order to provide needed reassurance and helpful tips to a productive and healthy work environment. Check-In Chicken is made to help you be productive, but not at the cost of your mental health.
How we built it
Using resources such as Google Developer, we created the chrome web extension.
Challenges we ran into
The Pomodoro-style timer was difficult to implement, as it features two distinct timers cycling through each other to monitor work-time and break-time. This challenge was highlighted the inability for chrome extensions to store data meaningfully without the use of database. Learning the structure of how Chrome extensions work, as well as how to make them efficient was difficult, as none of us had developed one before. The check-in implementation was also difficult to implement, as we wanted to check-in on the user occasionally without disturbing their workflow, and providing them with meaningful mental health support. Developing the UI/UX to be approachable and friendly, while also capable and straightforward was a challenge as well, but one we believe we overcame.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Developing the UI/UX to be approachable and friendly, while also capable and straightforward was a challenge as well, but one we believe we overcame with our mascot Gappy. None of our team-members have worked with Chrome Extensions before, with most of our experience with standard web apps. The Pomodoro-style timer was surprisingly complex to develop within the confines of Chrome Extension's capabilities, so developing a working timer was a really big win for us.
Photo/Logo found here. We claim no ownership of the photo: https://www.pinclipart.com/pindetail/hRwxTo_clip-free-corgi-clipart-cute-chibi-chibi-chicken/
Extore is a team of professionals who are passionate about creating extensions for web browsers. This devotion also gives us opportunity to appreciate work of other people. We get inspired by useful, open source extensions made by developers all over the world. Our strong belief is that one should share helpful add-ons with others. That’s why we’d like to present you our ever-growing list of favourite extensions that have inspired us. Moreover, as you probably have already learned, sometimes struggling for the best brings an end to the good. Talking about add-ons it often turns out that an upgrade is worse then previous version. Also it can become really tricky to get back to the beloved version of your favourite extension. That’s why we’re going to make not only the latest, but all versions of our favourite (and we hope yours too) add-ons available for download. No more compromises, just stick to the version you really like!