Proximity

Inspiration

The inspiration for our product came from personal experiences from team members as well as intimate discussions with students on campus. Mental health statistics and trends have guided us in making the product.

What it does

Our mobile application serves to connect the university community through local volunteer based collaboration. Our platform serves to connect individuals who would like to talk to others and voice their thoughts. Our application serves as a preventative measure to combat the growing trend of mental health illness. Many students are new to adjust to the change of the university lifestyle and feelings of loneliness can act as a catalyst for greater mental health issues.
Our application allows users to make new friends with students on campus and gives them a platform to talk with one another in an anonymous setting. Accounts will be tied to their mail.uoguelph email so that users are only members of the UofG community. This setting ensures that the platform is the optimal size to ensure a safe inclusive environment than also facilitates potential physical meetups should users wish. This feature also safeguards against the underbelly of messaging platforms such as harassment and trolling. Due to a lack of space on campus, it is becoming increasingly difficult for students to connect and make new friends. No other group is more vulnerable to mental health challenges and feelings of isolation and insecurity than our minority communities. A frequent challenge expressed by minority students on campus it the lack of other students to relate to. Thus our app also provides a platform for these oppressed members so that can connect with students of similar backgrounds through user preferences. International students for example may be hit the hardest with feelings of loneness but may never be able to confide their thoughts to other students due to communication and cultural barriers. Our app hopes to transcend these barriers and allow international students to talk to other international students as well. Ultimately, our application relies on campus collaboration and volunteerism and aims to exemplify the best that humanity has to offer. Our app tries to be the precautionary measure, a front line against mental health challenges. But we understand that there may be many users who have mental health issues using the platform. This is why we incorporated an education section within the app, that allows users to better learn about mental health issues and take modules to improve their knowledge. Users who take more modules will be rewarded with in-app badges to show to other users that one is aware and knowledgeable about mental health issues.

How I built it

We used the Ionic framework. This involves coding in html/javascript/css.

Challenges I ran into

We wanted to have server functionality but this proved very difficult. We attempted to use AWS and a server or our own. Learning a framework we had never used before was also very difficult.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are very proud that we have something to display our idea.

What I learned

Be prepared with a framework that you already know how to use.

What's next for UofG Hackathon Project

Server functionality.