B-62-mizumizu

one drop and stay healthy

What it does

“Mizumizu” is an APP on smartphones/iPhones to remind pilgrims about the constant intake of water during Hajj in order to prevent them from suffer diseases like heat stroke and heat exhaustion. “Mizumizu” sends notifications to pilgrims' phones that encourage them to drink water from time to time during their journey, based on the information linked to already existing applications on smartphones/iPhones; Health, Temperature, and Maps. “Mizumizu” combines four aspects of information; 1) daily weathers from the APP, Temperature 2) hours/distances of exercise for a day from the APP, Health 3) identifications of locations users drink water at from the APP, Maps 4) individuals’ body data (including body weight, height, age, gender, etc.), in order for the APP to estimate the best time to send a notification. To add enjoyment to our APP as an additional incentive for users(pilgrims), "Mizumizu" will take a form of game; grow your own plant on the APP by watering it. APP notifications work as a sign to water your plant, by which, pilgrims are required to tap a water drop mark shown on the APP’s screen to water the plant as he/she drinks water in real life. In addition, users can also enjoy the function called “water log” - kind of a road map of Hajj - on "mizumizu", which indicates where and when he/she actually drink water. This record contains three different levels of a plant; Blue (users’ bodies contain enough amount of water), yellow (users are required to drink water), and red (users are asked to drink water immediately due to the lack of water in their bodies). The users, who successfully raise his/her plant as they drink water in real life during Hajj, can obtain certification to show their completion of Hajj.

Inspiration & How we built it

"Karoshi", indicates death from overwork that takes forms of employees committing suicide or suffering from heart failure and stroke because of long work hours. While Japanese are known to be one of the healthiest people (with the record of longest life expectancy in the world), "health" is easily underestimated in everyday life when other work or duties seems to have higher priority. Similar issue can be analyzed during Hajj. In a way, the extremely high temperature and dried air automatically absorb water from pilgrims' bodies, but the duties of completing their Hajj is confronting with them. Our aim of producing an APP, "mizumizu", is to send a simple message; "one drop and stay healthy". In other words, “mizumizu” articulates an idea that health and religion are the coexisting factors, not contrasting factors. Hajj journey often confuses pilgrims that completion of the journey means more than maintaining their body conditions to stay healthy. However, in order to successfully and peacefully complete the journey, either of factors should not be underestimated than another. Therefore, “mizumizi” is there for pilgrims to fully support to sustain their health conditions, through focusing on fundamental act of human beings, drinking water. This is especially important during Hajj, because as being inspired by research article "Characteristics of Heat Illness during Hajj: A Cross-Sectional Study”, the dangerousness of insufficient water consumption leads to death-leading symptoms (e.g., diarrheal infections, heat stroke, heat exhaustion, etc), and pilgrims aren’t in aware of even help signs from their own bodies.

Challenges we ran into

1) Religious understanding: Due to the lack of familiarity with the concept of religion, Islam, it was a challenging aspect to imagine the religious perspectives of Hajj. The possibility of offending individuals’ cultural/religious perspectives can never be ignored, especially when the improvement of technology may share a contrast relationship with religious viewpoint. 2) Incentive to download an APP: Considering an incentive for pilgrims to download an APP was also another obstacle we ran into. Downloading an application takes time, phone capacity, uses battery, and requires money to use Internet which make pilgrims to be reluctant to download an APP. 3) "Simple, but necessary": to keep the simplified form of APP while targeting to solve the fundamental physical issues is another challenge we confronted with. This is because the challenge involves the design, function, and concept of "mizumizu" and thus required series of discussion and considerations.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Based on our core principle of product, "simple, but necessary", we've succeeded to keep this APP as most simplified form while providing a solution to the most fundamental issue for individuals' health conditions. This took place by utilizing the already existing APPs that provided by Apple - Health, Temperature, and Maps, which also help to decrease the users' (pilgrims') hesitations to download unfamiliar form of the APP. Moreover, the function of "mizumizu" also succeeded to stay as the most manageable form for the users. On top of that, "mizumizu" takes a form of game, and watering a users' plants can be done without reminding them that it is a health application, but more as an entertaining APP that keep them stay healthy. Finally, "mizumizu" considerably regarded voices of locals during making process, by paying close attention to varieties of voices range from locals who have completed Hajj in the past to government officer of Saudi Arabia. Our consideration has been performed by giving users options to choose the frequency of receiving notifications during their journey to avoid bothering rituals, which is also our success of respecting viewpoints of locals.

What we learned

By facing a challenge of understanding the religious and cultural concept of Hajj, especially understanding the social dilemma of balancing the improvement of technology and respecting individuals' religious relationship with Hajj, we learned the importance of paying attention to voices of different perspectives. For instance, one American mentor gave us the advices to consider health as a first priority during the religious journey due to an idea that without a healthy body condition, it is not even possible for pilgrims to complete their Hajj journeys. On the other hand, another interviewee claims her opposition to involve mobile devices during Hajj journey. This is because, Hajj is a journey one goes through to search for better morals and obtain the ability to renew your sense of purpose in life and get as close as he/she can with God. Considering such ideas, we contemplated the idea of publishing a certification of completing Hajj as an incentive for pilgrims to download an APP, and we also confirmed ourselves that our main role is to support pilgrims to concentrate on their journey during Hajj by maintaining their health condition. After series of discussion that allowed us to open our mind to different point of views, we came to realize that the most important thing to consider when making an APP is to strengthen the message that we are aiming to deliver through "mizumizu". Our core principle, message, of "mizumizu" is "one drop and stay healthy". This idea raised from a belief of taking both the cultural perspective and health of individuals simultaneously. Targeting the ideas of maintaining the health conditions of pilgrims in order for them to focus on them to build a better religious relationship and personal understanding, “mizumizu” is there for all the pilgrims. To conclude, from the experience of creating an APP, we learned the importance of deliver one clear messages that take considerations of different perspectives and viewpoints of people.

What's next for mizumizu

The future potential of "mizumizu" extends to multiple areas. One includes the possibility of developing game aspects of the APP. For example, through producing a content of quiz session regarding the importance of water, or required daily nutrition intake. Another possibly include the utilization of accumulated data of individual's physical data into different medical field, or improvement of Hajj facility (e.g., which spot in Hajj journey has demands for more number of water tanks) On the other hand, finding valid solutions for upcoming issues should also take into a serious account. Currently, there are two main issues "mizumizu" is facing; promotion and maintenance fees. In order to effectively promote "mizumizu" depends on the raising awareness of water's role in health, especially during Hajj. Therefore, the uses of celebrity or nodes of local communities to promote the importance is one of our framework to solve an issue at the moment. Another issue is to obtain financial resources to maintain the published APP. As for a solution, for instance, several percentage of fundraising to improve the overall environment of Hajj has been considered.