Face It Feline

AR App Mockup
Healthcare Provider Mockup
Google Cloud Vision
GIF
Angry Felix
GIF
Happy Felix
GIF
Sad Felix
GIF
Shocked Felix
Logo
Domain

Inspiration

Children with disorders such as Asperger's and Autism have difficulty understanding emotions due to their disorder due to their different brain chemistry. Unlike neurotypical brains, emotions cannot be picked up intuitively- they need to be studied. Many people with these disorders can recite stories of un-intentioned misunderstandings where they were seen as callous or mean, which is not true.

We want to help these kids with fun, safe environment where they will be supported so they don't fear making mistakes.

Healthcare providers already have a similar concept of using pictures and stories to help children with Asperger's and Autism understand emotions. 'Face It Feline' take it the next step, embracing technology is its potential to help marginalized groups.

What it does

Children can go the to 'Face It Feline' website to meet Felix, a talking cat that also has some difficulty understanding emotions due their different brain chemistry. They will be asked questions and real-life scenarios involving other people's emotions. Then they respond using their webcam and taking a picture as their response to the question. Google Cloud Vision will check if the child made the right facial expression.

The next stage is using augmented reality, AR. Users can play around with 'Face It Felix' face filters. When they make a sad or happy face, the program will change to the corresponding filter. We have attached a video demonstration of this.

We've also included some diagram of how we could further expand 'Face It Feline'. It could also become an AR app, where users can bring up their phone camera and have new scenarios depending on their location. It could have a healthcare provider side, where a healthcare provider can track if the child has difficulty empathizing with certain emotions, and to suggest follow- up actions. We have also attached mock-ups of these ideas.

How we built it

We built it with React and Node, with significant time spent on connecting to Google Cloud Vision. For the AR, we used Lens Studio, the same software that Snapchat uses to make their face filters. For the mockups, they were made in a mixture of Adobe XD and Adobe Photoshop.

Challenges we ran into

Setting up the Google Cloud Vision with Express. It was our first time working with the Google Cloud Vision and it took 4 mentors and all afternoon for us to figure it out. It ran during our tests on local server. Unfortunately, it stopped working near submission and it is still locally hosted.