LetterLink

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Inspiration 💡

The inspiration for LetterLink came from the rising loneliness epidemic. Our team members have identified friends, family, and members of our community that suffer from this affliction. One part of this problem is social anxiety. We know that many people struggle to make friends because having immediate face-to-face contact or rapid digital communication can be overwhelming. This is where LetterLink comes into play. We provide a low-pressure means of communication for those who struggle with social anxiety and loneliness.

What it does 💬

At its center, LetterLink is a digital pen pal app. Users of LetterLink are capable of starting a letter exchange with a random user from around the world. To ensure a low-pressure environment, messages are artificially delayed by 24 hours to simulate mail service waiting times. This gives users time to think about the contents of their messages as well as something to look forward to the next day when they receive a response.

How we built it 🔨

We constructed LetterLink using React Native in combination with Expo. We identified React Native as a versatile coding platform that would adequately fit our needs. We also considered MIT APP Inventor and Android Studio. However, we found that for our goals MIT App Inventor was too rudimentary when it came to UI development and Android Studio was too complex for our skill set.

Challenges we ran into 🚧

The primary challenges we ran into were time management and discontinuous product workflow. This year many of our group members were unable to attend our school's STEM club. This put us at a disadvantage as our meeting times had to fit into each member's schedule. This resulted in some issues in time management as meeting times had to be negotiated and sometimes certain members couldn't join regardless. This also created some struggles in our group's workflow as our group couldn't meet in person. Sometimes certain code would be inconsistent with the code another member had developed due to communication issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of 🏆

We're exceptionally proud to get to the point we are at right now as we have exceeded our expectations for LetterLink and its concept. Going into this competition, we had a goal of making meaningful strives towards the issues of chronic loneliness and social anxiety. We are proud to have an app that can help people experiencing these conditions, and it is better that we can achieve this as a team. We are also proud that we were able to persevere past the many challenges we faced and gain many valuable soft and technical skills during this experience.

What we learned 📖

During LetterLink's development, our team learned many academic and collaborative skills. For one, this app competition required a degree of collaboration we were almost unprepared for in the beginning. We had to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and settle our differences to accomplish our mission. We routinely had to update one another on the progress of LetterLink while ensuring we met each deadline we set for ourselves. Many of our group members learned new coding and development skills that furthered their already elaborate set of skills. Moreover, our writing skills benefitted tremendously. The reflection questions for our development process challenged us at times. However, we're grateful for the challenges we have faced for they have honed our skills as individuals and as a team.

What's next for LetterLink ✈️

For LetterLink, we want to improve the communication dynamics between individuals and global bulletin board setups. We also believe that we can adjust our theme to fit the penpal style better. The user experience could also be enhanced with letter and handwritten animations for typing and sending letters. Polishing the theme on our login screens would be another useful improvement. For further inclusivity, we want to integrate more language customizations as this will allow for more cultural diffusion on our platform. LetterLink will truly reach its potential once we can integrate an effective moderation system, as this will separate us from other digital pen pals.

Built With

Submitted to

Ready, Set, App!

Created by

I primarily worked on management, graphic design, writing, and filmmaking. This competition has certainly been a challenge, but a rewarding one at that!

Dakota Wilson
I worked on the back end. It was my first time using React Native, which was a little intimidating, but I have learned a lot.

Artem Adylin
My role focused on research, documentation, and conceptualizing the reflection questions.

Harsh Patel
Kaelie Greenwald