Care-ma

Our logo
Designing a new quote
The main view page
Database structure
Backend schema
Encouragement filter, karma, and favorites in action
A coder's motivation
Custom karma and banner icons

An Overview

Care-ma is a stress-reliever app that uses the natural good of humanity to help those who might need it.

Our Inspiration

After a long day of stress and work, we were walking back from our last classes when we came across a little box filled with heartfelt messages. On the box, a note, saying take what you need, and leave what you can. After reading only 17.5 notes, we felt better. A little bit of our stress went away, and we got a little bit more happy.

In our attempt to give what we can, we thought of our skills, and a week later, this hackathon. It’s given us an amazing opportunity to give back. The lives of students and really anyone nowadays are so filled with stress that it can be hard at times to see the light. Our app allows anyone to add meaningful messages for anyone who might need them.

What it does

Our app has two main components: getting inspired and inspiring others. Anyone with the app can hop on and see a procedurally generated word cloud composed of some of the most popular words with positive connotations. After a simple click, they’re taken to a page with a random message that a stranger has created. All this doesn’t require a login so that anyone anywhere can take the edge off when they need it.

The next part of our app is about creating someone’s path to a better day. There are several ways to customize each message, but not too many that they become over complicated. The messages are uploaded to a server and accessible anywhere.

This app is built around human kindness, and their desire to help others when they can. But this is not always true, no matter how sad that may be. To help counteract this, we briefly scan messages for any extremely malevolent intentions, however we’re lenient so that anyone who’s just trying to help can do so uninterrupted.

Challenges we ran into

Our team consists of two hackathon beginners, an in-person hackathon beginner, and a mentally damaged hackathon veteran. This caused much confusion throughout the hackathon, mostly concentrated at the start. When we got our groove, however, and started on our project, we realized none of us had any backend experience. We assigned two people to learn to use CockroachDB and Google Cloud. Several hours and concussions later, we ran into an issue no one could solve. Mentor after mentor fell waste to it, and had no idea what to do. Even the mighty google solutions engineer stood no chance. That used up so… so much of our time. And we were not able to get everything done.

Another challenge was Zepp. We wanted to use their API so that anyone could look at their watch and instantly feel a little bit better. But that proved difficult when their servers crashed and they ended up leaving early (before 2am). This changed our plans, and we did need to work around it.

We also only had one front end developer. He had, in the past, worked in a team, but this was his first solo mobile app mission.

Worst of all, there were no chips or soda to be seen. Working through the night proved to be exceptionally more difficult than we had anticipated due to lack of something to munch on. We hungy.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Even through all our challenges, we were able to create a final product that we’re all proud of. Not only this, but we used several new API’s brought to us by our lovely, beautiful, radiant sponsors. We learned a lot, accomplished a lot, and worked through many adversities, and for all those reasons, we’re proud of everything we did.

What we learned

What's next for Care-ma

Care-ma is amazing, but due to limited knowledge and time, we were unable to complete everything we would’ve liked to. We would like to make the app more customizable, without losing its simplistic feel. This would include a watch app and a desktop app, but also several features. Push notifications to routinely lift your spirits. Allowing community photos to be used in the app, as well as anonymous thank you’s.