PandaPals

Figma Recipe (PandaPals)

Inspiration

In our group of 5, we decided to create a prototype of a mental health app (through Figma) that keeps a person accountable to participate with their activities that stimulate their mental health. First, we were thinking about creating something to solve a problem that creates mental health issues. We were thinking about meditation apps and discussed that we are not motivated to use those apps because they do not have any incentive to keep using them. From that, we thought about the app Duolingo. There are notifications that show up once in a while to keep the user involved with the app, keeping it interactive and interesting for the user to use. We wanted to implement something that would keep our users accountable to improve their mental health. We realized that people like to take care of something or someone else before themselves some of the time, so we thought we try to let the user think they are taking care of an animal but in reality, they are taking care of themselves too? We had 3 CS+Design (2 sophomores, 1 junior) majors in our group and 2 CS majors (sophomores). Some of us had prior knowledge of Figma, while others had none at all. We had to research wireframes and how to utilize grids in apps in order to create a minimalist, relaxing, and calming app for the user. We did not want the user to feel overstimulated by using our app. We ran into a few problems such as trying to get our user input to stay consistent once entered to show up on our app. We had to watch YouTube videos in order to grasp a pure understanding of this concept. We also had to make decisions like choosing the font, choosing the color scheme, splitting the work/frames, and being good at time management. We wanted to create an experience to calm the user, the user should not feel pressured or overwhelmed by the app. They would subliminally improve their mental health by taking care of their animal. We also did not know each other too well as we merged groups in the beginning. We learned a lot about each other’s working habits in order to create an ecosystem/environment that works best for all of us.

What it does

Our app, Pandapals, provides a Panda pal as an encouragement and someone to complete daily health tasks like walking, meditating, and resting. The user is focused on completing the tasks for the Panda to make it happy. If the user fails to attend the tasks, it affects the Panda in our app. Having a virtual support animal helps users follow daily tasks. The tasks are designed in a way where the user would feel the Panda with them every step of the way. This way, the user would be working to make the Panda feel better in turn making the user feel mentally healthy.

How we built it

We built the application completely in Figma and created a working prototype of the expected idea of the application. We started with ideation by utilizing the SparkHacks Design Thinking Recipe FigJam, wireframe sketches, and then finally, implementation. As our ideas developed, we added more elements to our application to enhance it overall.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges that we met was to choose one topic we wanted to dive into. We went through all the tracks and decided to follow track #1: Health. Another one was to gather all ideas and suggestions and organize them into a flow. For some people, this is the first time they visualize an application in Figma so it can be confusing to learn using new features.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud of how all of us worked together and were able to bring our idea to life because we were very concerned the first day if we will actually be able to finish on time since we had too many ideas to implement. We are very satisfied with all the visuals and how well they flow together given the time limit we had. We are also proud of how much we have learned about mental health and how we are creatively able to tackle the issue.

What we learned

Our goal for the project was to address the problem of mental health among teens and adults due to daily stresses and depression. Not only were we able to provide a creative solution to the problem by creating the Pandapals app, but we also learned about various ways we can tackle the problem and how users can interact with the app to resolve or improve their mental health problems. Through this project, we also got the opportunity to learn about user experience and user interface design as we implemented our project in Figma and created the prototype. Overall, we learned and applied a lot of knowledge through this project.

What's next for Pandapals

Now that we have the basic framework of the application, we can further develop the app by implementing more features where the user can feel more connected to their ‘friend,’ like including a journaling option, where the user can create more memories with their Panda pal! Another milestone for this project would be to implement it in code and launch it for users where we can collect data to conduct user experience research and enhance the app accordingly.