Chenxi Huang and Kelley Gou build apps the way most teenagers might build a playlist – alone, at home, working until something clicks.
The two Irvine teens have been named global semifinalists in the Technovation Girls competition, which challenges young women to solve real-world problems using technology.
Making dance accessible
Huang created Chorify, an app paired with a 3D-printed wristband to help deaf and hard-of-hearing people dance. The app uses pose estimation to compare a dancer’s movements against a reference video, while the band translates a song’s beat into vibrations a dancer can feel.
She was initially working on an app to help her practice dancing, a passion since age 6. That changed after volunteer work, where she saw people with disabilities and began wondering how dance might feel for someone who couldn’t hear the music. Hard-of-hearing dancers often rely on feeling others hitting their steps on the floor.
“I just want to make dance more accessible and inclusive so everyone can feel the joy from dance,” Huang says.
Projects that empower
Gou’s app also traces back to volunteer work. She signed up to help at an outdoor Easter event for visually impaired children, where she was assigned to hand out food and snacks. She noticed many kids waiting for a parent to take the food for them instead of doing it themselves.
“I feel like most of them were kind of scared to come grab the food,” says Gou. “I thought I could create something to empower them.”
Gou had already been building a general trip-planning app – one born out of her own family’s habits. “When it comes to travel, my family always gets into some kind of conflict,” Gou says, laughing. “I thought maybe we could plan beforehand so everyone could just enjoy the vacation.”
She decided to turn the app into an accessibility tool built specifically for visually impaired users. The result, Walk With Me, uses artificial intelligence to describe a user’s surroundings aloud from a photo, plan itineraries by voice command and pull in flight, hotel and other bookings.
Gou says she never expected to advance so far in the Technovation Girls competition.
“I want to help my community, help people in Irvine and Orange County,” she says. “I want to learn more so that I can create more projects that help others.”
