Mriya

Mriya—not just another conventional application with online registrations for sessions with doctors, therapists, and specialists, but a network for people with similar experiences and stories to share—a community for people to heal together.

What it does

Mriya is a web application that is designed to bring communities together. User can register for a Mriya account. Then the user is taken to answer questions, which the application can then use to find others users who might not share the same experience but have the same goal. Mriya places similar users to the same chat, where they can connect with each other and share their experiences of achieving their goals.

How we built it

We used React.js to build the frontend along with TailWindCSS framework. To group the users into the different chats, we also implemented collaborative filtering recommender systems. For storing the user's information, such as the user's username, password, and response to the questions, we used Google Firebase. Firebase enhances security as the passwords are protected and each user must be authenticated to use the app, which decreases bot attack on the application.

Challenges we ran into

Our vision for the project drastically changed as we went from the concept to the development stage. Sacrifices were made both for the complexity of the project and the individual’s earlier proposals. Different levels of exposure made us weigh all the propositions we made previously. With three first-timers and a freshman on the team, almost every technology we used was new to us. Specifically, lack of tutorials and outdated language, overlapping content during "merging", CSS formatting, and so on. But no matter how much frustration accumulated during the last few days, we still didn’t give up because the idea of Mriya kept us together and we are proud of what we ended up with!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of making the chat page work. After a day of debugging issues and learning about the newest version of the libraries, the chat page was fully functional with sign-in authentication.

We are also proud of merging the code and having all functions of the website coming together. These includes, adjusting styling of buttons, fixing overlap pages, and checking database consistency.

What we learned

We have all strength all coding skills, whether that be frontend or backend. Because our team consists of beginners, this experience served as a great introduction for them to React and Firebase. Three of our four members had no previous experience in working with React and Firebase, but at the end, we manage to complete with a fully functional website.

What's next for Mriya

Initially, we wanted to create a web platform with multiple pathways depending on the user’s goals. Ideally, once you enter the website, you would see an option to have a 1-on-1 consultation with a professional. To further enhance the support, we thought about creating a hub for volunteers like psychologists, psychiatrists, and others willing to help people "heal" and a page with resources and recommendations from World Health Organization and other organizations. Moreover, it would present an option to "join the community," meaning that after clicking on it, you would be transferred to a questionnaire, which would help create a user’s profile, and based on previous answers, our recommender system would connect you to a group of similar people. Lastly, a page with a "journal" (a chat just for you) would appear as an option. A place where you could leave your thoughts, comments, and basically anything that was personal to you. The novelty of this project: Mriya is not supposed to be a formal platform where you just go to sign up for an appointment with a doctor. It can be used on a daily basis too. The connections that you might make can become lifelong. Instead of posting the same stories on anonymous forums, you would have a designated place for this. No matter where your anxiety (for instance) comes from, you will be able to always open Mriya to lessen your stress and progress toward healing yourself. Some features that we wanted to implement (but weren’t able to):

Using Recurrent Neural Networks with LSTM and GRU layers for classifying the sentiment of a piece of text (a sequence of words). Using sentiment analysis to score each word as more positive or negative, we would be able to analyze the (anonymously) recent messages of users and implement an alert system, which means that emergency contacts required in the profile would be notified. Furthermore, an app would try to calm a person by enabling soft music and neutral colors. This score could also be used to measure the progress toward eradicating mental health problems. Automatic translation of the user’s text input in chats. A feature that could possibly break the language barrier and ease the future upscaling of the project. Adding recommendations for groups based on the GPS locations would certainly benefit some people outside of Ukraine, as they would certainly appreciate in-person conversations. Like in the app "obimy" (developed in Ukraine and can be found on the app store), where instead of just sending messages, there would be an option to send "senseges"—something like hugs, kisses, and other sensations.

In the future:

We would love to see Mriya as a hub for people to get connected and share their experiences since Ukrainians are going through unique emotional struggles—there were others. Developing a full-scale mobile app and transferring all the features there and adding new ones.