To The Moon

Inspiration

As college students, we often say things like "Today was a bad day" or "Today sucked". However, there definitely were small moments throughout a bad day, like laughing casually with a friend or seeing a beautiful sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge that do bring us tiny bits of joy amid a lot of stress. When times are stressful, it is hard to recognize those moments of joy as they are often overshadowed by the negative happenings of that day. In order to help with things like that, we are often recommended to journal. However, manual journaling is a habit that requires time to build, and as with any habits, is very hard to keep up with consistently. We also considered perspectives outside our own demographic, such as young professionals who have just entered the workforce and feel that life has become repetitive and unfulfilling, international students who struggle with loneliness and cultural barriers that overshadow positive moments in their day, and married adults with families who sometimes feel that life has become predictable and mundane.

What it does

To The Moon automatically records memories through different methods such as audio recording to detect laughter, facial expression reading to detect smiles or relaxation, and heart rate tracking to detect relaxation or excitement. It takes these memories that bring you joy every day and turns them into a constellation map for the week. Users can zoom in on each star to see the specific moment it represents. Stars appear brighter when the system detects more happiness or when multiple data points indicate stronger positive experiences. Over time, the map can also be viewed long-term through week-by-week clusters of stars or clusters grouped by types of activities. Pattern recognition helps users realize what sorts of activities may bring them the most joy. The goal is to help people regain hope, take initiative in their own lives, and realize that there is happiness in life.

How we built it

We used Figma Make to build the prototype and design the product experience from start to finish. We continuously iterated to ensure that the prototype had each of the features that we wanted one by one. We first built the constellation page until we got certain stars brighter than others, and then built the journey feature within the constellation page. This by far took the most time because there are a lot of interactive elements in the constellation page and this is the main portion of our product. After that, we built the pattern recognition page and then refined the profile page.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge we faced was the short product lifecycle and thinking about how to curb that through features like pattern recognition. We also considered features that would allow people to share memories, but we realized the app is meant to be for oneself. Turning it into a social media app would inevitably result in comparison, so we removed that feature and removed friends as a whole in order to focus on the individual. This led to a broader clash between creating the app as a personal wellness tool versus making it a social app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We produced a full working prototype that demonstrates how our product would work end-to-end. We also developed new features that we ourselves would actually use to improve our own lives and our own happiness. We’re proud that the app is something we genuinely believe would be useful to people, and that we were able to build a meaningful product aimed at helping people. We also think it’s especially cool to visualize memories in a constellation format, like looking at the night sky, which is something that is one of our favorite things to do together as friends when we go on trips to the countryside together.

What we learned

We learned a lot about collaboration and about working with different people to come together around a cohesive idea, as we all had different ideas from our own personal experiences on how to go about the prompts. This led to learning how to compromise when it comes to product design decisions. Another important lesson was working to understand users’ perspectives beyond college students like us, including working professionals and married people. This also pushed us to think more deeply about what sorts of categories and experiences people actually value in their own personal space.

What's next for To The Moon

One future feature we’re thinking about is called Meteor Shower, which would resurface particularly bright memories from the past, such as reminding someone of a meaningful moment they experienced a year ago. We are also exploring ways for users to share memories if they choose to, while carefully thinking about how sharing can exist without compromising the app’s focus on personal wellbeing. For example, a feature that would include allowing users to add photos to their memories, adding a customized element to their memories resembling the photo-sharing aspect of a social media app like Instagram, but still maintaining a personal touch.