Inspiration
When it comes to social issues that we want to tackle, we wanted to choose something that was near and dear to our hearts. With the recent rise in the number of depression cases at Waterloo that led to fatal endings, we wanted to dig deeper and learn more about what we’re dealing. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), globally more than 300 million people suffer from depression. In Canada specifically: A new study based on results of the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey―Mental Health shows that 11% of 15- to 24-year-olds met the criteria for depression in their lifetime, and 7% experienced depression in the previous year. (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/170118/dq170118b-eng.htm)
What is Depression exactly, and how do those affected feel? According to the Canadian Mental Health Association , mental illness, and depression can often be caused by external factors such as having a weak support system, and having to constantly adapt to changing environments. As a result, these individuals often feel sad, hopeless, worthless, anxious, isolated, and LONELY. We can’t help but empathize and feel moved to create a solution that can help lift the spirits of these victims.
What it does
We want to introduce a new social interaction application that is actually successful in making real life exchanges happen between two individuals . Gravity is an app that will use real time location tracking to actively search and pair two individuals to meet up at a local coffee shop and have a live chat, on the house. Users of this app can choose when they are comfortable or free to meet others, by turning their chat radar on to enable the pairing. When both parties accept the spontaneous invite to chat, a chat room will appear to allow the two individuals to plan the meeting. At the same time, a time-limited (60 minute)voucher for a select coffee shop will pop up , and can be redeemed in person at the specified meeting location. Instead of driving just conversations based on mental health, we are trying to facilitate and encourage all forms of conversations, and the expansion of social networks.
How we built it
We used Xcode and firebase to code the app.
Challenges we ran into
Since we decided to work with Xcode, only developers who had a mac were able to code. Other hackers were given responsibility of research and organization. A lot of our time was spent on learning how firebase works so we did not cultivate team members' previous skills.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Linking with facebook and authenticating users was a success. We developed a solution for social anxiety which will be very useful for university campuses and even the broader community.
What we learned
We learned to not underestimate the time it takes to create a project. Learned to use firebase with xcode, which makes implementing ideas much easier.
What's next for Gravity
Can implement the full ideas like using geofire to locate users. piolet the app
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