Mizzou computer science students design fitness web application for senior capstone project 

May 21, 2024

The Project

One group of computer science students set out to develop a new fitness goal tracking web application.

“When brainstorming for this project, we discovered in our group that we all had different forms of working out,” Allison Drainer said. “I do rock climbing, another member does strength training, two do cardio and another member bikes. We wanted to make sure our workout application could accommodate the different muscle groups needed for these exercises.”

The goal for the application was to eliminate the need for a personal trainer or gym access, which can be cost prohibitive.

“The application uses an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to dynamically recommend workouts based on your preferences and help you stay fit based on your lifestyle,” Gavin Boley said.

The Process

To create their web application, the team drew on knowledge from multiple classes needed for a computer science degree.

“Mizzou set us up well with classes to learn the required skills and information,” Forrest Pritt said. “A lot of us took web development and design. We took algorithm classes to figure out how to make the back end work with the front end. We took a database class to make sure that all the user data and exercise could be stored.

“Mizzou set us up to take this project and apply all the principles we learned to a career,” he said.

The Outcome

The final application, while not publicly available, has the capabilities of a full website, including an account creation page, login page and a homepage that takes users to the various tools available on the site.

“Users can view their progress tracking to see how the different workouts are helping them meet their goals,” Bina Gallagher said. “Users can create their own goals, enter workouts they’ve done on their own time and enter profile information changes.”

The application also achieves the group’s goal of reducing the need for users to hire personal trainers.

“Users can be given customized workouts based on the information they provide on the website and its backend machine learning algorithms,” Gallagher said.

Learn more about computer science at Mizzou!

Read about other capstone projects here.