Inspiration

Hearken means to "give respectful attention". The inspiration of Hearken was the need of a simple platform to support those suffering with poor mental health. Mental health is something that everybody challenges with, however, a simple solution it is to have a support network. It sounds simple, but even social networks like Facebook/Twitter/Instagram don't provide this support network as posts are easily dismissible or rarely taken seriously. There are many times an individual feels to be the only person with their thoughts. Hearken was created to build that bridge by creating a simple platform for people to share their thoughts anonymously and receive advice/support anonymously from other people!

What it does

Hearken is a web application that allows the user to share one journal-style post each day. In addition, you can also send a reply to a person who created a post with advice/support. Simply put - the user makes a restricted one post everyday about anything that is bugging them (or anything that person would like to rant about), and then another user is paired with them and is required to give a reply to their post.

How we built it

Reacting.js
Firebase
Javascript
Google API for Authentication and Google Login

Challenges we ran into

The team was challenged with learning React.js for mostly the first time.
Emily had a had hard time using FaIcons to stylistically format the clouds/sky used in the UI.
The team had many different opinions on the user's experience - so we had to come to one consensus. Initially, we wanted to allow many users to reply to one post, however, we then realized this may cause problems with synchronizing the data - so we decided on just one post/one reply and ultimately only two users paired with each other.
We had a lot of requirements, but we couldn't implement them all.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The UI looks relaxing. The background changes depending on the time of day.
The algorithm to make pairings actual works and does its job to pair multiple users.
The workflow we chose for development went smoothly and we rarely had merging conflicts!
Everyone was passionate, everyone learned, and we all contributed well.