Notes of Gratitude

Brainstorming!
Our first working version!
Rachels first draft of our site mascot Louie.

Inspiration

When discussing mental health, a recurring theme in our brainstorming discussions was social media. We talked about its potential for harm and community in an online space and what it means to be a digital citizen. We concluded that we wanted to help create a positive online space for those in our community and dubbed this new endeavor positive social media.

What it does

Notes of Gratitude acts as an ever-growing anonymous message board of positivity and gratefulness. It allows people to submit notes to the site and then filters out profanity and places the approved notes through the site for others to enjoy.

How we built it

The building process took part on two axes, a content filtering script built in python and a display created in HTML and CSS. We then brought these two projects together by creating code that allowed the two to "speak" enabling some super cool live-updating between the two! The final stage of our process focused on the visual design and presentation of our site this ranged from debating color schemes to writing the very text you are reading now! Everyone came together and contributed in unique ways to help create an engaging and cohesive final product.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a lot of challenges along the way but working through them was all part of the fun! Our greatest difficulties were twofold and both social and technical. We had to manage to work and communicate as a team of 5 coders and learn how to integrate two very different coding languages into one simultaneous system. Luckily, I believe we were successful in both, though we were unable to get web server integration working our code works well and we hope to expand to a web server soon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are super proud of how our site turned out; it looks amazing but sadly we need a web server for the site to be fully functional.

What we learned

This project provided an opportunity for all of us to branch out and experiment with new ways and types of programming. Whether it was delving into the bowels of HTML or fiddling with the intricacies of live updates, we each learned from and taught each other in near equal amounts.