Gravity

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 with. 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 youth ages 15-24 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 those battling this mental illness.

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 conversation, and the expansion of social networks.

How we built it

We implemented a front end utilizing JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3. Our back end consist primarily of Python, which we coupled with the Reddit API praw to pull relevant Reddit user data. We integrated the back end with the front end using Python's Flask, because it is easily compatible with the front end JS.

Challenges we ran into

A predominant issue we had was effectively requesting redirected URL links using Python. This was unfamiliar ground for all of us so it was inevitable to run into problems. However, we tackled the problem from multiple angles and finally found success using Flask. Flask also assisted in integrating our back and front end, which was another issue we struggled with.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our front end UI design was something we're very proud of. And our Flask URL requests successfully pulled the necessary reddit data using the praw api.