Group 7 - Sentiment

Inspiration

After personally seeing countless of our fellow peers suffer because of mental issues revolving around school and the coronavirus pandemic, we decided to create a solution to the problem by introducing Sentiment. A chat examiner examines the keywords of the message, showing if the person is feeling stress or anxiety. Our inspiration was that one of our cousins had committed because of the stress he had gone through during his time at the University of Waterloo. As a result, our group made it their mission to stop this from ever happening as the aftermaths of one suicide result in tremendous heartbreak and despair and leave a mark for future generations.

What it does

Sentiment takes the conservation between two people and analyzes each message individually finding out if either user is displaying signs of anxiety, sadness, depression, etc. After analyzing each message and finding the corresponding emotion, it sends the other user an alert with the emotion that the second user is facing, so they can take appropriate action to support their friend.

How we built it

In order to build this project, we use firebase, real-time database together with PHP. As for the front end, we used HTML with CSS to make the chatting application.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was learning PHP as this was the first time any of us had done this. Another was working together on one GitHub repository and managing different branches. The largest challenge we came across was making a project in which all of us can contribute.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to finish this project within the given timeframe effectively as a team, which allowed us to build on teamwork, leadership, and time management skills. Moreover, we were able to use PHP in coordination with the database, which provides for an extremely smooth experience with no latency or lack. Another important accomplishment is that we were able to learn about how to use GitHub and work together as a cohesive unit on it in order to bring this project to fruition. Lastly, we also learned about mental health awareness, and how prevalent and important of a problem this is, and it should be addressed appropriately, inspiring us to create Sentiment.

What's next for Sentiment

The sentiment is hoping that we can launch this onto other platforms because as of right now this is only compatible with Facebook Messenger. If we can bring this onto other platforms like Instagram and Snap chat so that we can save many more lives and help people suffering from the effects of Mental Health Issues.