Reverie

Levelling up the lives of ADHD and neurodivergent women through gamified self-care and productivity.

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Inspiration ✨

As neurodivergent women, we frequently face struggles in our day-to-day lives that seem inconsequential to others. Performing self-care, keeping in touch with friends, or even getting out of bed can feel like a constant battle that we are too lazy to fight. Our brains crave stimulation and novelty, often daydreaming to turn the mundane into an adventure at the expense of reality. Yet, by viewing the world through a gamified lens, we can begin a journey towards our objectives through a simplified, linear path teeming with excitement. As Roald Dahl once said, “Life is more fun if you play games,” a sentiment particularly resonant with the ADHD brain that thrives on instant feedback, competition, and rewards. However, our endeavor extends beyond plain tasks; we yearn to form meaningful connections with those who truly understand us. Enter Reverie—a state defined as "blissful immersion in one's thoughts"—our app stands as an invaluable companion to the ADHD experience. And with Reverie, we hope to provide neurodivergent women from all over the globe a safe space to connect - an environment that encourages personal growth to share our silly but wonderful daydreams.

What it does 🔥

In a world where planning our future is such a vital life skill, it is imperative to introduce parallels between the game world and reality in easily digestible segments. So what if we provided rewards after every little challenge? The app sees you as an adventurer, joining conquest parties up to four members to slay mini-bosses and level up. The catch? To damage the bosses, you must complete tasks to contribute to your team’s efforts in whittling down the boss. When finishing a task, the player must send an image to the party chat as proof they completed it, where the party can commend the knight’s efforts. Along with contributing damage, completing tasks also earns the player points, which they can use to purchase awards to give other guild-mates or freeze their task streak, further contributing to the overarching social theme of our app. Even small victories deserve to be celebrated, as they serve as vital stepping stones to achieving the greatest things.

How we built it 🛠️

Design

We initially created a mood board full of inspiration and started by sketching rough designs in Figma to get a basic idea of Reverie's appearance and functionality. Then, we created a sitemap, rapid wireframe iterations, then developed more detailed prototypes, incorporating additional features and refining the visual presentation. Throughout this process, we continuously revisited and improved our designs based on user feedback and testing. This iterative approach ensured that Reverie was user-friendly and accessible to all, while also showcasing its most important features.

Frontend

  • Next.js, React.js, and Tailwind CSS

Backend

  • Utilized JSON Web Token for user authentication and session management
  • Stored user and posts information in a PostgreSQL database for efficient data storage and querying
  • Used AWS S3 bucket and multer for user image upload with file validation and low latency file retrieval
  • Implemented robust REST API endpoints with Express.JS for frontend and backend communication

Challenges we ran into 💥

The project was quite challenging technically. Due to the size of our team, we had to separate responsibilities while building our project. We had one person work on the UI/UX design with Figma, presentation, and pitch (Patti), while the other person works on both the Next.js frontend with the Express.js backend of the application (Jasmine).

Aside from the workload for each person, it was also a fairly difficult experience to be able to create a responsive full-stack web application that is integrated with a PostgreSQL database as well as AWS S3 file storage. We ran into some interesting challenges like IAM identity issues, ACL permission problems, as well as various issues relating to managing user sessions with JSON web tokens such as invalidating JWT’s when terminating the session. However, in the end, we managed to resolve all of these issues by reading up on the source of the information, the documentations!

As for the implementation for this project, we went with the various components technique as we incorporated multiple popular libraries such as Next.js and Express.js, as well as the Sequelize ORM to make ease of database management and querying (no more painfully long SQL queries that uses 5 cross joins and 15 subqueries)!

Accomplishments that we're proud of 🎉

We are very proud of how well we worked together and persevered despite being a 2-member team. As mentioned before, we combined our utmost efforts to create our final product, with Patti being responsible for the pitch, presentation, UX/UI design in Figma, and video, and with Jasmine soloing the full-stack development in the tight time constraint.

What we learned 🧠

During the development of Reverie, we learned how to manage our time effectively when under pressure. We found that sorting tasks and keeping open lines of communication among team members were key strategies for success. By staying organized and communicating clearly, we were able to overcome challenges and accomplish our goals efficiently.

What's next for Reverie ⏭️

We hope to expand beyond ADHD and help everyone, one step at a time, a future where neurodivergent individuals can easily find support.

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