Recently some of the team got their trainers on and took part in RunHack London 2017. The ultimate goal of the hack was to come up with ideas to make London the most run- friendly city in the world.

With Furthermore’s evident love for getting outside and becoming more active with newly launched app Go Jauntly, RunHack was the perfect Hackathon to get involved in.

With speakers from across the industry providing insight into current trends and risks within the running landscape in London, the team identified what they were going to focus on: aiding runners needing to get through large groups of people in congested areas and improving the confidence of runners who were worried about encountering verbal abuse.

Problems identified, the team set to work creating a prototype which they then went on to test in the streets of London. Building hardware from scratch in 2 days wasn’t really an option so the team used off the shelf hardware: an iphone and a bluetooth speaker. Using laser cut card, velcro, and tape the team then modelled the prototype product. This let the team move really quickly but also test the tactile parts of their solution.

The basic idea was 2 buttons runners could press whilst running which would emit a loud sound from a Bluetooth speaker, alerting passers by of the approaching runner. They tested polite sounds on one button, like bicycle bells through to more authoritative sounds such as boat horns and car beeps on the other.

Using Firebase the team were able to track every time each button was pressed on a live map, which would be a key element for future users, showing them where congested areas were or an incident had occurred with a member of the public. 

Read more about the team's journey here.

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