VIMA | Devpost

Inspiration

The inspiration behind VIMA was to create an app that would adequately help people with mental health issues without making them feel uncomfortable and to also provide them with the resources to find concrete help.

What it does

VIMA is an chatbot app that helps users to connect with other people with similar mental health issues, talk with a digital AI that adapts and responds based on your responses, and in severe cases of mental health, connect you with a professional.

How we built it

We built the front-end of the app using Framer, and used other apps to build the back-end of the product. To create the pitch site, we used Canva and Slack to help with organization and building the information for our pitch. VIMA will be a mobile app, and we have also adjusted for that. For the chatbot, we will use Python and TensorFlow to create our neural network machine learning model to create responses for the chatbot to use. We will also use MongoDB to store keywords and user intents to train the model. Lastly, we will deploy our application to the web with Heroku.

Challenges we ran into

There were already some chatbots in the market, so this wasn't a novel idea. However, there were some significant flaws with the chatbots, such as asking for your information and being too pushy with how they were approaching the consumer's mental health. The biggest challenge, however, is getting people to initially use our app and open up about their mental health, even to a robot under complete anonymity.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Prior to the project, we were coming in with a pre-mature idea and no experience with UI/UX. However, over the past 2 days, we were able to create a great UI/UX using Framer, and developed our idea into a product that can hold its own and thrive in the market.

What we learned

I think we learned a lot about the intricacies that go into created an idea, and the complications that come with trying to create something that is unique and can provide a unique experience for the consumer. We needed to be innovative with the way we were treating our patients because if we stayed generic, there is no difference from us and our competition in the industry.

What's next for VIMA

The initial designs in our pitch are just the front-end, and with some more time can develop an app that can thrive in the market of mental health, providing quality care to our customers while also supporting other businesses that professionally help those seeking help. Finding sponsors through campaigns and funding would also be on the top of our list.