Pause - for a minute

Pause - for a minute

Inspiration

University is a fast-paced environment with overwhelming assignments, tough grades, and moments of self-doubt. While it is a mix of excitement, challenges, fun, stress, and everything in between—most students are juggling courses, work, and personal challenges and either don't have the time to unwind or check in. One of us was having a low day and a hug from a friend at the end of the day made it feel like everything is alright again. Mental wellness isn’t always about big changes; sometimes, just a minute of pause can make a world of difference. Whether you're feeling stressed about an exam, homesick, anxious, or simply in need of a quick mood boost or celevration, we envisioned a welcoming and accessible space designed to lift your spirits in a fun and engaging way using technology.

What it does

"Pause for a Minute" is an AI-powered emotional check-in kiosk that helps students recognize their emotions and engage in activities to boost their mood. It’s quick, interactive, and accessible to all.

Location: These are 32" TV displays that can be placed in common student spaces like the SHED, library, and lounges for students to interact with at any point.
Detect Mood – Users can check in through facial recognition, voice input, or touch selection.
Personalized Activities – Based on their mood, they receive a fun or relaxing activity to reset and recharge.
Feel good – If you are happy, you can send a positive postcard to someone or do a 15-second dance party. If you are feeling stressed, you can engage in a 30-second breathing exercise or burst some stress bubbles. If you feel low and gloomy, you can read the positive postcard someone wrote or play with a virtual pet. Every session is a step toward feeling good.
Why it Matters- We know that students, often put themselves last when it comes to mental well-being.

How we built it

What activities do users do when feeling different emotions? We asked our friends who are students on what are quick activities that they do to celebrate, relax, or hype themselves up that helped us come with the different activities that can be used to train the AI.
Whiteboarding: Ideating and wireframing the different screens and understanding how to make it accessible for the diverse student body.
Digital wireframing: The vague outlines were made into black-grey wireframes on Figma to understand the flow and structure of this interface.
UX writing: Since it is a quick experience, we had to keep the language engaging, quirky, and empathetic.
Creating Design System: Deciding a color palette, types, buttons, and creating components that made the prototyping process efficient and faster
Prototyping: The final step of creating, changing the wireframes into the engaging screens we expect the students to interact with. The different flows depending on different use cases were built to make the interface accessible to all users.

Challenges we ran into

Creating the accessible interface was a challenge because of the time crunch, our solutions were based on our knowledge and personal interactions with DHH, BLV, and wheelchair users.

Accomplishments that we're proud of and what we learned

That a problem statement can seem too big to be solved over 24 hours, but when you get a whiteboard and a good team, you can find some simple and feasible solutions that can also have a large impact on a seemingly large problem. Another accomplishment was understanding and considering the needs of Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Blind and Low Vision, and wheelchair users from the discovery to the prototype phase, which made the process of creating an accessible interface seamless.

What's next for Pause - for a minute

Integrating AI in the product for it to be able to detect moods through facial expressions, and the possibility of detecting more than just three moods, since human emotions are a spectrum that can not be categorized in 3 moods that we currently have.