## 💡 Inspiration

We got inspiration from or back-end developer Minh. He mentioned that he was interested in the idea of an app that helped people record their positive progress and showcase their accomplishments there. This then led to our product/UX designer Jenny to think about what this app would target as a problem and what kind of solution would it offer. From our research, we came to the conclusion quantity over quality social media use resulted in people feeling less accomplished and more anxious. As a solution, we wanted to focus on an app that helps people stay focused on their own goals and accomplishments.

## ⚙ What it does

Our app is a journalling app that has the user enter 2 journal entries a day. One in the morning and one in the evening. During these journal entries, it would ask the user about their mood at the moment, generate am appropriate response based on their mood, and then ask questions that get the user to think about such as gratuity, their plans for the day, and what advice would they give themselves. Our questions follow many of the common journalling practices. The second journal entry then follows a similar format of mood and questions with a different set of questions to finish off the user's day. These help them reflect and look forward to the upcoming future. Our most powerful feature would be the AI that takes data such as emotions and keywords from answers and helps users generate journal summaries across weeks, months, and years. These summaries would then provide actionable steps the user could take to make self-improvements.

## 🔧 How we built it

### Product & UX

* Online research, user interviews, looked at stakeholders, competitors, infinity mapping, and user flows.
* Doing the research allowed our group to have a unified understanding for the app.

### 👩‍💻 Frontend

* Used React.JS to design the website
* Used Figma for prototyping the website

### 🔚 Backend

* Flask, CockroachDB, and Cohere for ChatAI function.

## 💪 Challenges we ran into

The challenge we ran into was the time limit. For this project, we invested most of our time in understanding the pinpoint in a very sensitive topic such as mental health and psychology. We truly want to identify and solve a meaningful challenge; we had to sacrifice some portions of the project such as front-end code implementation. Some team members were also working with the developers for the first time and it was a good learning experience for everyone to see how different roles come together and how we could improve for next time.

## 🙌 Accomplishments that we're proud of

Jenny, our team designer, did tons of research on problem space such as competitive analysis, research on similar products, and user interviews. We produced a high-fidelity prototype and were able to show the feasibility of the technology we built for this project. (Jenny: I am also very proud of everyone else who had the patience to listen to my views as a designer and be open-minded about what a final solution may look like. I think I'm very proud that we were able to build a good team together although the experience was relatively short over the weekend. I had personally never met the other two team members and the way we were able to have a vision together is something I think we should be proud of.)

## 📚 What we learned

We learned preparing some plans ahead of time next time would make it easier for developers and designers to get started. However, the experience of starting from nothing and making a full project over 2 and a half days was great for learning. We learned a lot about how we think and approach work not only as developers and designer, but as team members.

## 💭 What's next for budEjournal

Next, we would like to test out budEjournal on some real users and make adjustments based on our findings. We would also like to spend more time to build out the front-end.
## Inspiration

Our inspiration for this project comes from our own experiences as University students. As students, we understand the importance of mental health and the role it plays in one's day to day life. With increasing workloads, stress of obtaining a good co-op and maintaining good marks, people’s mental health takes a big hit and without a good balance can often lead to many problems. That is why we wanted to tackle this challenge while also putting a fun twist.

Our goal with our product is to help provide users with mental health resources, but that can easily be done with any google search so that is why we wanted to add an “experience” part to our project where users can explore and learn more about themselves while also aiding in their mental health.

## What it does

Our project is a simulation where users are placed in a very calm and peaceful world open to exploration. Along their journey, they are accompanied by an entity that they can talk to whenever they want. This entity is there to support them and is there to demonstrate that they are not alone. As the user walks through the world, there are various characters they can meet that can provide the user with resources such as links, articles, etc. that can help better their mental health. When the user becomes more comfortable and interested, they have the choice to learn more and provide more information about themselves. This allows the user to have more personal resources such as local support groups in their area, etc.

## How we built it

We divided ourselves into two separate teams where one team works on the front end and the other on the back end. For our front end, we used unity to develop our world and characters. For the back end, we used openai’s chat API in order to generate our helpful resources with it all being coded in python. To connect our backend with our front end, we decided to use flask and a server website called Pythonanywhere.

## Challenges we ran into

We ran into multiple challenges during our time building this project. The first challenge was really nailing down on how we would want to execute our project. We spent a lot of time discussing how we would want to make our project unique while still achieving our goals. Furthermore, another challenge came with the front end as building the project on unity was challenging itself. We had to figure out how to receive input by the user and make sure that our back end gives us the correct information.

Finally, to adhere to all types of accessibility, we also decided to add a VR option to our simulation for more immersion so that the user can really feel like they are in a safe space to talk and that there are people to help them. Getting the VR setup was very difficult but also a super fun challenge.

For our back end, we encountered many challenges, especially getting the exact responses we wanted. We really had to be kinda creative on how we wanted to give the user the right responses and ensure they get the necessary resources.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of the final product that we have come up with, especially our front end as that was the most challenging part. This entire project definitely pushed all of us past our skill level and we most definitely learned a lot.

## What we learned

We learnt a lot during this project. We most definitely learnt more about working as a team as this was our second official time working together. Not only that, but in terms of technical skills, we all believe that we had learnt something new and definitely improved the way we think about certain aspects of coding

## What's next for a conversation…

While we could not fully complete our project in time as we encountered many issues with combining the front end and back end, we are still proud
## Inspiration

Our inspiration for the website was Discord.
Seeing how that software could bring gamers together. We decided we we wanted to do the same thing but with with coworkers, and friends giving them a place where people can relax and have a laugh with people during their free time from work, especially with the pandemic affecting mental health. To bring as many people together to de-stress was our goal.

## What it does

RELIEF is a place for you to take a step back, relax, and collect yourself before getting back into your daily routine. RELIEF has many different ways to help you de-stress, whether your stress is caused by individual, organizational, or environmental factors, we definitely have a way to help you! RELEIF has multiple stress relief options including meditation, gameplay, and an interactive chatroom.

## How we built it

We built it using react with firebase.

## Challenges we ran into

We are all fairly new to web development so we were learning everything on the fly. Getting things in the desired position on the website was a challenge. As well as making the website looks as intended on different screen sizes.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of the final submitted product. The simple chic look gives our website the intended relaxing, stress free environment. We are proud of how much we accomplished with how little knowledge we had to begin with.

## What we learned

We learned that there's a bunch of resources outside of school that teaches you how to code things (YouTube)
We learned our productivity level sky rocketed while participating in the hackathon.
We learned that even in isolation there are still people willing to share their wisdom despite not know who we are, it gives us the motivation to eventually do what the mentor, organizers, and sponsors are doing.

## What's next for RELIEF

We are focusing on developing a mobile app just like how we had it
Adding multiple single player and multi player games for users to enjoy. Adding more functionality to the chat. Adding more music to the meditation room with a more interactive interface.