Inspiration
When we got together as a team, we began sharing our whys (why this hackathon?) and in doing so, we shared personal stories and struggles. We realized there were many topics we women are not given space in our society to openly and vulnerably discuss because they are stigmatized. We also realized women do not have access to a central platform where people/women of color experiencing issues related to sexual and reproductive health can communicate and easily access relevant and reliable information. It felt great to connect with other women and do just that, in an environment we felt held and seen in and could share our experiences without shame or condemnation. With this realization, we began to brainstorm how we could provide this safe space along with reliable resources (e.g, psychoeducation, expert advice) while using AI to create an engaging and customizable community. Of all the topics we discussed, we decided to narrow down our focus around women's sexual and reproductive health.
What it does
Talk Taboo is an AI-powered platform centered on sexual and reproductive health (SRH) for all women and non-binary people of color. We leverage and humanize our users' experience of AI via our friendly AI, Tabi. Tabi uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 Turbo and a custom GPT builder that is configured with custom instructions for legitimacy of information, a personalized knowledge base for cultural diversity, and specialized AI capabilities for improving user experience.
With Tabi, our platform aims to create a single hub for the latest accurate and reliable information on SRH which:
- Drastically minimizes the overwhelm of sifting through the internet for trustworthy information.
- Educates our users with a diverse set of information from reputable sources reflective of their experiences in a centralized resource hub.
- Provides community forums in which our users can connect and discuss all topics (nothing's off the table! Or taboo, if you will).
Challenges we ran into
- We had so many causes we were passionate about it was challenging to narrow down where to place our focus
- Building a digital product that uses a specific form of technology.
- So many products already exist that address so many issues! Inspiring and also a challenge as we think about what we want to specifically contribute to this space
- Learning how to code a full stack project. As well as learning new coding languages like React and Python and new tech (ai).
- Connecting the ai to the backend then to the frontend. And not being able to finish the code because of such.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- The culture we were able to create as a team within a short amount of time. We all felt supported, heard and encouraged. Not to mention we laughed a lot.
- How we navigated the three different time zones (PST, EST, CET) and held efficient and productive meetings.
- Creating beautiful designs in such a short amount of time.
What we learned
- Time zone/time management
- How to code a full-stack project
- Refine figma prototype with new tricks
- Communicate ideas in a clear and concise way
- Optimize deck flows with key information presentation
What's next for Talk Taboo
Future scope for Talk Taboo looks bright and promising. To start, we plan on adding more customizable features that will allow users to chose if they want resources to cater to them by pinpointing information based on racial/ethic identity. We also want to be able to incorporate activism within the platform where the community can come together and stand by causes they believe in. This would look like an active community forum and events page for community organize.
Additionally...we want to expand! There are so many more taboo and stigmatized topics related to women to explore, and sexual and reproductive health is just one of them.
Built With
- figma
- javascript
- openapi
- python
- react
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