Tranquil

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Inspiration

Menstruation is a complicated process, considered both a blessing yet a test by many. Especially as a Muslim woman, this time of the month gets extremely difficult to stay spiritually connected when one is distanced from praying and fasting. When it comes to understanding the relationship between menstruation and Islam, each of us struggles with a certain aspect:

For Urooj, it is knowing the difference between culture and religion.
For Yuanyuan, it is having access to resources that explain Islamic principles.
For Nujailah, it is about feeling close to Allah even while menstruating.
For Shermeen, it is about finding a community where it is easier to discuss stigmas and taboos.

If all of us are struggling in some way shape or form, then that means there may be thousands of other women who feel the same way.

What It Does

This app is designed to help Muslim women stay spiritually active while building a sense of community. There are 5 main tabs on this app:

1) Home/Calendar Tracker: a virtual calendar that displays date of menstruation and predictions for future cycles

2) Guidance: easily accessible information regarding Islam, including things you can and cannot do while menstruating. Hadith and quranic verses included.

3) Daily Tasks: set of tasks to do during a seven day duration that are meant to help user feel closer to Allah, while staying engaged with Islamic duties. Each task you complete helps you earn stars, which show up publicly on your profile page.

4) Community: a communication platform to bring Muslim users everywhere together. A new question is released every week related to a popular topic many may have questions about (self-care, staying healthy, etc). This section is meant to increase engagement and allow women everywhere to get answers to different questions.

5) Profile: allows main user to see all their information (filled out when signing up for app including photo, age, interests, hobbies) as well as level of star achievements in daily tasks.

How We Built It

This mobile app is built for Androids because they are popularly used around the world. We used Android Script to proceed with our project. We used our programming skills to create this app using Java. Additionally, we used creative programs such as Adobe and Canva for UX/UI portion of the app. Github was the primary location to store, collaborate and add to our portions of the app.

Challenges and Accomplishments

Although we had a great time creating the app, we faced difficulties when collaborating virtually. It was our first time doing a project like this, therefore we had trouble with time differences. It was difficult to schedule accordingly. Lastly, we had some difficulty when using Github to upload our program features. We faced multiple merging conflicts.

However, each of us are proud of all we accomplished:

Nujailah: Learned how to write in Java within a week. Yuanyuan: Performing good deeds through building this app and participating in hackathon Urooj: Our team's growth and progress since Day 1 Shermeen: Being able to introduce a unique idea that will benefit people everywhere.

But most of all, just creating an app is a big deal for us- especially in a language NONE of us are familiar with!

Java was a new language that we had very little to no experience. However, we understood that Java was the ideal language to create an Android app. Therefore, we tackled this obstacle and learned how to use it within a week's time. We successfully applied it and produced working results!

What's Next

As for what is next for Tranquil, we plan to expand this app to other platforms, such as onto the web and iOS devices. We have found that there is no other app like Tranquil in the market. During the research phase of our project, we only found one other Android app aimed at tracking periods, specifically for Muslim women. However, it only had one simple calendar, meant to record the date of your last period. Our app is innovative in this aspect: it provides more features that will be helpful for users everywhere. It is not always easy to find others from your community, so we hope that Tranquil serves as a platform to connect women everywhere.