ALIGN

Inspiration

We wanted to build something that solved real issues, and what better issue than communication? Even the ordinary person often has to deal with miscommunication and misunderstandings. Now imagine how it must feel for caregivers and care recipients who often find difficulty in expressing and understanding each other sufficiently.

What it does

We built a mobile app that intends to break those boundaries through voice recordings. Unlike text messages, the tone of a voice recording cannot be misconstrued. Furthermore, it is easier to recall information through listening to a full voice recording than reading shortened notes. We wanted to care recipients to access simple straightforward UI that allowed them to record voice messages and sent them to caregivers who they felt comfortable sharing with. Caregivers, on the other hand, should be empowered by providing them a platform of constant communication, through accessing voice recordings, notes from care shifts, caregiver group chats as well as AI services to help give suggestions or improvements for future shifts.

How we built it

We used React Native as the main frontend and interface, while falling back onto JavaScript for the basic backend calls. We relied on Supabase for their state-of-the-art data storage, retrievals and tables and Railway for continuous integration and deployment, where our AI service, powered by Gemini, would be active 24/7.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge we ran into was thinking of our proposed solution, especially gearing something towards the elderly who are particularly unskilled or unwilling to learn current technology, which is a very understandable sentiment. Another challenge we faced was the unfamiliarity with a lot of important coding and software engineering practices as two of our teammates had little experience with software development. Be it tracing through code, understanding how and why features were implemented, as well as numerous failed simulations and builds were all part of the learning curve.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Ultimately, we're proud of the app we've created and hope that others can see our motivation behind building an app like this. Of course, we would love for others to use our app or even build upon its features!