Pedia Pal

Inspiration

We were inspired by our childhood. Many of us spent our time on websites like Neopets, where we would rush home to feed our pets, maintain their well-being, and earn points to dress and accessorize them. Much like how you need to care for your Neopet daily, your in-game character needs to follow their treatment with the same amount of dedication.

What it does

The app allows patients to check out their daily tasks from their healthcare provider with an in-game character that follows the same prescribed regimen. The app will feature two different types of tasks: physician-assigned tasks and patient-assigned tasks. Patients will be able to create a maximum of three of their own healthy goals that earn them coins. By completing their health tasks virtually, and in real life, players can earn coins and rewards for consistency. Players are given a health bar at the top of the screen to indicate how much progress they've made in their daily tasks. As players complete their daily tasks several days in a row, they can earn streaks, which earn them additional coins. Coins allow players to earn items such as costumes, accessories, and even pets which they can come back to and "feed, play with, walk, and give treats to."

How we built it

We used Figma to design the app and Visual Studio Code and C++ and xaml to program it. With the shoestring budget in mind, we found royalty-free images and icons to include.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into challenges during ideation. Because of the broad, open-ended challenge, our brainstorming led to many directions which we could take for our app and it was difficult to pare it down to a single, fleshed-out concept.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of how we worked well as a team. We were able to take time out of our weekend to work through our project which involved background research, user research, design, and programming in unfamiliar languages that were brand new to us. Everyone played a part in the creation of Pedia Pal.

What we learned

Creating an app was a first time for all of us. We learned that Figma can be a lot of fun to use! We also gained a lot of exposure of the program to run and build an app on the backend.

What's next for Pedia Pal

We hope to continue building out the app by adding more customization options, more treatment plans, and mini-games to keep the patients engaged. In addition, we plan to continue adjusting rewards and coins to keep patients incentivized to use the app, striking the balance between making it difficult enough for the rewards to feel like an accomplishment while making it easy enough to keep users motivated. This can be accomplished with A/B testing. As we continue developing the app, we will onboard an animator to make the in-game characters have reactions and movements to add a lively touch.