MorningLight(FB messenger) / Eos(mobile app)

A fb chatbot(or a chatbot app) who provides mental health information and supports

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Inspiration

This part is described through first-person narrative by Yu-Hsiang, Hsu(Martin). This is his personal story. I was once having a good relationship with a girl Aurora (Eos in Greek mythology, which also means dawn/morning light) and yet we become stranger four months later because of her Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and my immature behaviors and lack of understanding of MDD. My "self-righteous" understanding of care becomes a pressure for her, and I was described as a disrespectful ex-boyfriend who destroys the trust she had on me. Since then, I also realize that many friends of mine have the same mental issues as well, and yet I am afraid to give them a hand since I do not know what I can do for them. Even now, I am still struggling to forgive myself and escape from guilt traps. It has been hard for me. I hope I can find something meaningful by developing this app(s) with the help from my classmate Shuyi. It can be redemption, forgiveness, growth, knowledge of MDD, positive thinking, ANYTHING! At the same time, I hope this app(s) have the ability to help others as well or the people who want to know more about mental disorders so less people can prevent suffering from mental disorders. I understand that we may not develop an functional and useful app within limited time but I hope I can at least tell myself that I have tried to put efforts and my heart to do my best to become a better person. Thanks to Shuyi's support to make this possible. Much appreciation!

What it does

  1. Give a space or direction for those who want to talk about their mental health issues
  2. A short quiz for those who are not sure if they suffer mental disorders
  3. Provide brief information for those who want to understand more about mental disorders

How we built it

  1. We built it through Facebook Messenger Developer (https://messenger.fb.com/developers/)
  2. We decide to not to develop the chatbot through online tools such as Dialogflow (https://dialogflow.com/). Since we are in first year and this is our first hackathon event, our goal is to create a chatbot that requires much more coding so that we can learn more.
  3. We are also trying to develop an app(Eos) with the same functionalities but we will mainly show our ideas through FB messenger.

Challenges we ran into

  1. Since we are not familiar with Javascript, it was a huge challenge for us to write the code with Javascript. Thankfully, Javascript is not hard to learn, and there are a lot of sources on the internet that help us understand the logic and terms.
  2. Without the help of online tools which usually has machine learning ability, we are having a hard time on determine what the user is trying to say and we need to provide relevant responses so right now the chatbot can only accepts two specific comments(Yes/No) for one argument.
  3. Making an app from scratch with limited knowledge is definitely a challenge but we enjoy playing around with different platforms.
  4. Creating a mobile application with React Native which can also communicate with the chatbot (not the first priority)
  5. Learning how to use Google firebase and Oauth2 to login to Facebook platform for React Native mobile application

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our goal is mainly having fun and learning new skills. To Martin, it is significantly meaningful of course. The app/idea is more like a symbol to him. To Shuyi, UX/UI design with Javascript and technical improvements are definitely huge accomplishments for her.

What we learned

  1. New programming skills: Javascript.
  2. Teamwork and work distributions
  3. Share of ideas and communication skills
  4. Technical knowledge behind Access Tokens, Webhook, platform design
  5. Martin himself? forgiveness? He is not quite sure. At least it is a start. It will be a long path to take.

What's next for MorningLight/Eos

We may develop this app(s) further on. It will be very difficult for us since chatbot requires machine learning ability and more Javascript skills. However, we will keep our passion alive and try to make the app(s) stronger and smarter.

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