Shift

Inspiration

People experiencing things like sadness, anxiety, anger often think their situation is helpless. However, in most cases, the person can take simple steps to shift their mood - which they might just not be aware of.

What it does

Shift allows users to journal, especially when they need a safe space to share their thoughts. After the journal entry is submitted, suggestions for ways to approach the current emotional state are presented. User’s emotional states are recorded over time for them to track and monitor.

How we built it

Shift is a mobile app built using React Native / Expo. We are doing sentiment analysis on the user’s diary entries using Machine Learning (offered by Google Cloud) combined with self-written mood detection using certain keywords that appear in the diary entry.

Challenges we ran into

It was our first time to work with React Native so we faced a lot of challenges trying to get it to work. We originally wanted to built the diary in a way that lets users just speak to the phone and we then would utilize speech-to-text to persist the entry, but we weren’t able to get the microphone integration to work in time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We built our first mobile app in ~ 1 day!

What we learned

React Native is easy to get started - but there is a lot to learn.

What's next for Shift

The sentiment analysis and mood detection can be improved to increase accuracy. The recommendations on what to do when experiencing anxiety etc. should factor in scientific results on working methods. The app could also factor in trends over time, e.g. if the person is sad for multiple entries in a row suggesting seeking therapeutic help.