Sanguine: Positive News Stories

Inspiration

When we started hearing that some of our teachers and friends had stopped reading the news because it was too depressing, we knew there was a problem. There had to be a way to stay informed while staying positive.

It has been proven that stressful news can harm both your mental and physical health. It can lead to anxiety, depression, fatigue, gut problems and more. Your body will also release stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Yet reading the news has become a part of everyone's daily routine. Can you imagine living without it?

That's why we created Sanguine. A website that allows you to specify the news that you want to see, and Sanguine will filter out stories so you can see positive, customized news from your usual news provider.

What it does

On Sanguine, users will be able to filter their news by answering a short survey to get more specific and positive news. Based on the optimism ranking and preference, users will get different news stories that interest them.

How we built it

We used Figma to create a visual representation of Sanguine. Using Python and the co:here API, we programmed the basic backend of the website. Our skills and time were limited, but we were able to make a code that retrieves news articles using News API and prints out specific up to date articles based on what the user inputs.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was finding team members. Because we both have limited coding experience (Python), we needed to find members who had skills in javascript and understand web development.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of being able to take our idea and build a functioning prototype within a day with a team of just two people.

What we learned

During Hack the North, we learned a lot about coding in Python using co:here. We never even heard of co:here before coming to Hack the North, so being able to use it to create a functional program within a day was amazing. Our mentors guided us through the project, and helped us learn how to use the co:here API. We also learned what new skills we needed to develop before our next hackathon. Most important of all, we learned how much can be accomplished in two days and very little sleep.

What's next for Sanguine: Positive News Stories

The next step is to turn our wireframe prototype into a working website. When we have more time, we plan to do this by using Django and React. We also plan to involve our readers more by allowing them to rank the suggested news sites. This will help improve the AI results and get users more engaged on our platform. The next version will have functionality that allows users to customize the type of news they receive. For example: 60% Science, 10% World News, 20% Sports, 10% Politics.

Built With

• cohere
• figma
• newsapi
• python