Blink & Bloom

🌱 About the Project

During the Health, AI & Gamification Hackathon (HIGH) at the 33rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia (ACM MM 2025) in Dublin, my teammate Hemalathaa Arumugam Elumalai and I built a project that blends wellness, AI, and play.

Introducing: Blink & Bloom 🌼 — a browser-based wellness game that turns your natural eye movements into the act of nurturing a virtual garden. By linking healthy eye habits to in-game rewards, we help users combat digital eye strain while engaging in a cozy, relaxing game experience.

❓ What it does

Our game transforms unconscious eye activities (blinking and looking away from screens) into interactive, rewarding actions.

Blink detection: Every natural blink waters a plant in your 3×3 garden grid.
Look-away rewards: Glancing away from the screen for 3+ seconds triggers magical rain effects that help your garden flourish.
Bug capture mini-game: Animated snails require eye rotation exercises (up → right → down → left) plus a timed blink to catch them.
Blink symphony: A musical rhythm mode where blinking on-beat generates raindrops while training healthy blink rates.

The aim: restore natural blink frequency (15–20 blinks per minute) and integrate eye exercises seamlessly into screen time.

💻 Methods & How We Built It

We combined computer vision, web technologies, and vision science research to create the experience:

Integrated MediaPipe AI face landmarker models to detect real-time blinks and track 468 facial points.
Implemented high-performance browser rendering with optimized Canvas and hardware acceleration for a smooth 60fps experience.
Used WebRTC for secure, local webcam access — all AI processing happens on-device for complete privacy.
Designed game mechanics around clinically informed vision exercises, such as the 20–20–20 rule and extraocular muscle workouts.
Developed in HTML5 for cross-platform browser support (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge).

🔗 Play it here: https://queby.itch.io/blink-and-bloom
💻 GitHub repo: https://github.com/nathanyaqueby/blink-and-bloom

🙌 Results & Final Presentation

✨ Team

Nathanya Queby Satriani (Indonesia): Implementation of AI blink detection, MediaPipe integration, and visual/game design
Hemalathaa Arumugam Elumalai (India): Game design rooted in wellness psychology and vision science research, ensuring meaningful health outcomes