Inspiration
Over 35% of students in the US have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, and up to 44% of college students report struggles with depression and anxiety. With these rising rates of mental health struggles, the need for help and resources grows everyday. However, finding an available mental health professional can often be another challenge in itself. Being students ourselves, we understand and combat similar issues everyday, and thus wanted to create a project directed towards reconnecting people with the help they need to thrive.
What it does
Lightly is an online application meant to connect its users with mental health professionals, as well as themselves. Through daily journaling as well as tracking long term mental health trends we hope to allow users a chance to find mindfulness and peace within themselves. Additionally, we hope to connect our users with professionals ready to address their needs and struggles.
How we built it
We began by designing our project layout in Figma. We then proceeded to implement our project using React for our website development. Additionally, all of our designs were made using Adobe Illustrator.
Challenges we ran into
Originally we had plans to use Firebase to store user data such as journal entries and daily mood tracking; however, due to time constraints we were unable to accomplish this goal within the deadline.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our ambition was always directed towards creating a project that addressed the needs of todays society, and we are so proud to have met this goal with our project addressing mental health.
What we learned
We all started off with rudimentary knowledge of web development; however, we all rose to the challenge and created our website using React. Additionally, in attempting to properly address issues regarding mental health, we gained new knowledge about how to cater our website to our users. One aspect of this is through our color scheme. We made sure to pick neutral colors, avoiding brighter colors like Red that could incite stress, as well as duller colors such as Grey that could cause sadness. We built an environment around this idea, hoping to create a comforting and relaxing atmosphere for our users to achieve mental acuity and personal peace. Additionally, we originally planned to simply connect our users with mental health professionals; however, after learning the impact journaling can have of personal perception and overall mental health we decided to adjust our website accordingly.
What's next for lightly
The next steps for lightly include increasing the functionality of our website to include things like a database for our users to store their previous journal entries, as well as long terms trends to report your mental health to both you and your trusted mental health professional. Additionally, we would like to partner with local mental health professionals so they can use our application to better help their clients achieve their goals.
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