Pause Anxiety

Please note that this project is currently in a closed alpha, and will not work for people who are not manually added to the tester list.

Inspiration

Approximately one in five adults suffer from anxiety, many in silence and without any assistance. I wanted to create a simple bot that could chat to them and help reduce their anxiety level. One of the members on this team has this condition, providing something that can help him inspired us to get started.

What it does

The app is designed to take the users mind away from the anxiety attack they are having. By distracting the user with conversation and "distraction games" the app will help reduce anxiety and get them to a safer space.

How we built it

Through a number of meetings we started with flow charts and ideas that we directed into how Pause Anxiety would function. The underlying technology is NodeJS Lambda utilising the Serverless framework, intermediate messages and intent elicitation data is stored using DynamoDB.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge was how we could keep the conversation going without being to specific, trying to cater for the wide variance in how the condition manifests itself. From a technical level, coming in with zero ML and Lex experience was a challenge conceptually at start, but easy enough to get to a level that could provide a reasonable conversation.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

The fact we had an idea that has come to a functioning app is always an achievement. I can also confirm that we have prevented at least one anxiety attack through using the bot.

What we learned

We have both learned things on a technical level and a personal level. For one of us it was our first foray into the world of software development, and a new career path. For the other, jumping into Lex has been a great experience and will look forward to future applications of the technology. More importantly, a deeper understanding of anxiety and its affect on people.

What’s next for Pause Anxiety

The next goal for Pause Anxiety is to continue developing the app until it is ready for public use. Ideally we'd love to see community engagement or commercial backing to bring it to a broader audience.