Season of KDE 2006

A Season of KDE 2006 project by Greg DeAngelis
Mentored by Michael Brade

Project Details

Synopsis:
KDE lacks a fitness diary and workout tracking application. More importantly, a recent linux.com article (http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/01/25/1935238) covers several fitness applications for Linux but many are somewhat dated and none seek to integrate nutrition and exercise logs into one easy to use graphical application. This is where KFitness will attempt to fill the void.

Deliverables:
KFitness will allow a user to track their diet and exercise progress. This application will be developed in C++ and will utilize the QT libraries. KFitness will allow the user to monitor food intake by graphing the daily nutrient breakdown, track weight, body measurements, and provide a log of daily exercise. These results will be charted so the user can clearly see how a diet combined with exercise can affect their appearance as well as allowing them to make adjustments based on past results. Daily nutrient intake could be graphed in pie chart form so the user can see how their daily caloric intake is distributed among th e different nutrient categories and how the ratios map to a diet plan as dictated by a nutritionist. The USDA maintains a food nutrient database (http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/) that KFitness may be able to utilize or the user can enter in their own food information. The exercise portion of the application would allow the user to track caloric expenditure in two ways. One portion would be cardiovascula r training where the user can log attributes including duration, distance, intensity, activity, and heart rate. The second portion would be a weight training log which would include a log of the exercise, the w eight used, intensity, and the number of repetitions. This data would then be stored in monthly XML documents in an effort to keep the maximum file size down. The application will also create XHTML progress rep orts for a trainer or nutritionist.

Project Schedule and Development Methodology:
For the first week I plan to survey current fitness log applications to determine their strengths and weaknesses in attempts to create a list of features and a rough interface plan. I plan to get feedback on th is plan from active trainers in the area and from past gym colleagues.

While developing this application, I will iterate with these trainers to constantly gain feedback as well as use the software myself as features become complete. I will most likely adopt an evolutionary develop ment model to allow completed features to be used as I feel this will help maximize the feedback I can get from real use.

[ Edit ]