Domestic-Violence-Support-App

Inspiration

We have all had shared passions for the prevention of domestic violence, etc

What it does

This app provides quick deescalation immediately following an abusive event, and is designed to help guide the user through their emotions through cognitive behavioural therapy and empathising and validating statements. The ultimate goal is to get the user to a more stable mental space where they have the better capability or desire to reach out to other support networks or hotlines, which we provide. Since the usage rate for these hotlines can often be low because of the inherent obstacle in just opening up to a living person, this app lowers this barrier, building rapport with the user and making them more apt to reach out to a better support system.

How I built it

In our group of four, two people had basic experience with the Java language and took charge of the coding. The other two team members had no programming experience, and focussed their efforts on designing both the content and interactive elements of the app. This involved a fair amount of research. The coding of the app was slow at first - neither programmers had ever built a whole mobile app prior to this project and one had never used AndroidStudio before. As the design half of the team completed flow charts describing the behaviour of the app, the programming half divided tasks between themselves to implement the desired features. The program structure ended up being quite simple - simply a series of connected "activities" that formed a survey-like experience, with the added dynamic element of shortcuts to dial emergency services or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. By collecting data from the user we were able to tailor the nature of the advice given by the app, hopefully resulting in a more relevant and helpful user experience. The design team spent a great deal of time developing questions and carefully phrasing advice that was incorporated as text in the app.

Challenges I ran into

None of us had ever built a whole app before. Not very familiar with the Android API. Had to spend a fair bit of time teaching ourselves how to code basic program elements (such as images and checklists). Was not always easy to spread the work out constantly through the team as the design and code often progressed at different rates.