Inspiration
Stories of students at Western and nearby universities suffering from mental health issues, and struggling to find resources that can help them at all times.
What it does
- Cara is a chat bot that carries conversations with a user, understands the sentiment behind the user's inputs, and creates recommendations on how the user can improve their mental well being.
How we built it
- We used HTML and CSS to create a landing page, and Sketch to visually represent Cara
- We used JavaScript, and a framework called BotUI to create the chat interface that interacts with users
Challenges we ran into
- Coming up with creative solutions without having back-end development
- Navigating a complicated JavaScript framework and learning the syntax
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- We made the chat work!!!
- Being able to complete a project as a 2-person team
- Accomplishing something at our first hackathon
What we learned
- Using JavaScript frameworks
- Different front end languages and their uses
What's next for Cara
- Expanding to mobile devices to make it more accessible and convenient for users
- Partnering with AI / machine learning technology companies to develop the back end and to store analyze the individualized data to customize the recommendations