HabitCircle

Inspiration

We decided to go with the following prompt:

Develop a platform that provides resources and communication tools for families of individuals undergoing rehabilitation to help support their loved one's journey.

We connected most with this specific prompt, especially as some of us have gone through a similar scenario where we saw firsthand the challenges families face when a loved one is undergoing rehabilitation. These experiences highlighted the need for a comprehensive platform that not only offers resources but also enhances communication and coordination among family members in a fun and engaging way. By creating this platform, we aim to provide families with the tools they need to support their loved one's journey effectively, fostering a stronger, more connected, and resilient family unit.

To narrow down our target audience and establish a proof of concept, we focused our research on adolescents and children who are dealing with depression. Our findings show that things such as regulating sleep and healthy eating faciliate the rehabiliation process. Dedicated time with a support circle is required, as well as treatment that is focused on the patient

What it does

HabitCircle aims to approach this problem in a way that all family members are involved in the rehabilitation process to strengthen family support, improve communication, and ensure a fun and collaborative approach to rehabilitation.

Our app involves role-based authentication, where family members can join a group using their family code. Roles include the parents, siblings, caregivers, and child. Family members are able to view and regulate the child’s rehabilitation activities such that they are catered toward the child’s needs.

We also decided to gamify rehabilitation activities so that the process becomes more engaging and motivating for the child. By incorporating a streak system with family-curated rewards, children can track their progress and earn rewards for maintaining consistent habits such as sleeping 8 hours a day, meeting their nutritional needs, family time, etc. This not only makes the rehabilitation process more enjoyable but also encourages children to stay committed to their activities.

How we built it

We used React for our web application and used Javascript, HTML, and CSS. We attempted to use Cloud Firestore as our database but ran into some technical complications when integrating with the frontend.

Challenges we ran into

In our initial planning process, we decided that a mobile app would be most ideal for this project, as it would be more convenient and accessible compared to a desktop application. We planned to use React-Native to build out the mobile application but ran into some troubles while getting our environment set up. Due to the time constraint, we didn't want to spend too much time on getting everything set up.

Another challenge we ran into was integrating the Cloud Firestore database with our frontend application. We had configured everything correctly but when it came to updating user inputted data from the frontend to the database, it was not updating as expected.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This was our first hackathon and we feel that as a group, we were able to do some good research and planning in order to solidify a solution. We also set up a schedule for ourselves to manage our time efficiently within the few hours that we had and were able to follow it to the best of our ability.

What we learned

We learned that the initial planning process is very important and drives the rest of the development process. Without having a solid idea and schedule in place, there may be additional hurdles or significant changes made to our ideas later on in the development process (which is not ideal). We also learned about the importance of time management in hackathon events. Due to the time constraints, we have to be very efficient with how we use our time and as a group, figure out what we want to accomplish by the end of the event.

What's next for Habit Circle

Some of our next steps include a mobile app for easier access and convenience, a doctor role which includes a calendar API, as well as a place where the doctors can prescribe medication and schedule therapy sessions with the child.

We also hope to integrate an activity algorithm that helps family members with the decisions of curating rehabilitation activities for their child based on previous activity data.