Podmates

Inspiration

We were inspired by the secondary research that we conducted which demonstrated a need for the creation of gardens and other natural spaces within urban communities in order to improve the mental health of those communities. The research demonstrated that the increase in green spaces would overall benefit the mental health of the given participants so we wanted to find a way to focus on people that would want to build and grow these gardens while also ensuring that meaningful relationships are built in these communities.

What it does

This app is meant to be a combination of apps: the first type of app is those that allow for in-person meetups such as the Meetup app which encourages in person interaction with an emphasis on two to three person groups so as to create a more personal environment when meeting and overall allowing a more meaningful bond between users to develop. The app is also meant to serve as a local community app like Nextdoor in that people within the community can easily find and communicate with each other.

How we built it

In order to guide our process we first looked at secondary research to understand what existing solutions were created. On top of that we looked at existing apps such as Nextdoor and Meetup to see how an app like ours would actually be built in the real world. We then built up a Lo-Fi Mockup of how our app would be structured then developed The Branding and finished with the High Fidelity prototype.

Challenges we ran into

The challenges we encountered during the completion of this project revolved around addressing the question: How can we best enhance user retention for our application? To tackle this obstacle, we engaged in brainstorming sessions and conducted surveys among adults residing in urban areas. Several ideas emerged, such as forming "pods" or groups within the application, each assigned specific gardening tasks, and incorporating a social networking feature to facilitate user interaction and event sign ups. To accomplish this, we enabled users to see if their friends had also signed up for the same events, fostering a sense of community within the application. Addressing another challenge, we focused on the unique value proposition of our application compared to existing alternatives, ultimately centering our efforts on community gardening. This decision allowed us to research the benefits of community gardening, particularly its positive impact on mental health.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our accomplishment lies in the development of an application that seamlessly integrates social interaction and gardening, navigating the loneliness of urban life while nurturing community involvement and promoting social initiatives among residents. To achieve this, we implemented a survey to tailor garden recommendations for users, simplifying the signup process and facilitating connections with like-minded individuals. We also had garden owners use structured schedules to encourage increased participation in gardening sessions, thereby promoting social initiatives.

What we learned

As this was the first designathon experience for two-thirds of our team, we learned valuable lessons. Collaborative teamwork proved to be essential, creating a smoother progress through providing valuable input and support. Additionally, we were able to improve our prototyping skills and familiarize ourselves with new features within Figma. The iterative design process highlighted the importance of user feedback in identifying and correcting issues. Moreover, we honed our time management skills, recognizing the need to prioritize project completion and ideation over dwelling on minor details amidst tight deadlines.

What's next for Podmates

The next step for our app would be implementing features that would check in on the mental health of the people using the app such as through surveying them and figuring out what would best help the users improve their mental health. This would give us a quantitative measure of if our app is effective in improving the mental health of our users.

Built With

• figma