Wavelength

The landing page.
A continuation of the landing page.
The Login page.
The Sign-Up page.
User's profile.
The Letters/Chat page.
The Community page, where one can find pen-pals.

Inspiration

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that affects 354 million people worldwide, yet is not as talked about as other mental health illnesses. PTSD is a serious mental health condition that often requires professional evaluation and treatment. While an app cannot replace the needed professional care, we wanted to develop something that would benefit PTSD victims. Currently, there are very less mental health apps that specifically cater to this area. And hence, Wavelength was born. Wavelength is a web application that provides a platform for people who have experienced traumatic events in their life, to share their story and build a community-based support system via an anonymous pen-pal-ship. And through this app, we also aim to raise awareness about PTSD.

Slide-deck

What it does

The web app primarily aims to serve the purpose of creating a safe space, free of triggers, for victims of trauma and enable them to engage with other people anonymously.
The app also allows for individuals to seek professional help/counsel if needed. It serves the purpose of encouraging victims to seek out the needed help.
Users can sign-up and are asked to create a profile with a username (actual name not public) and write a short bio about themselves.
A user can view other online users and connect with them.
The messaging functionality would work just as real-time letters would; letters take up to 4-5 hours to get delivered.
Letters enable the users to not be subject to the pressure of having to reply promptly and can seem as something to look forward to, instead of the traditional messaging system.
There is additional functionality of providing factual information about PTSD, in order to educate and raise awareness about the mental health condition.

How we built it

We used Adobe XD to design the webpages and use proper UX design principles and create a beautiful, flowing UI that aims to create a feeling of safety and togetherness.
The front-end of the website was developed using HTML, CSS, and JS.
We deployed the site on Github Pages and used a registered domain name: wave-length.space

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was collaborating on one project along with five people. However, we overcame that challenge and were able to divide up tasks. We hung out on Google Meet to talk about any problems we ran into and shared our thoughts and random ideas as well.
We had trouble configuring up the backend due to the limited time frame, but learnt a lot about Node.js in the process.
(Making a two minute demo video is also a strong contender for the hardest challenge.)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to develop a working front-end and a bit of the back-end model of our idea, were able to set up all the pages that we had in mind and finished implementing a working MVP.
Being able to learn from one another and communicate on a consistent basis was quite an accomplishment since we are all in different time zones.
We tried to think of different features and implement them as well as we could in this project, and build a user-focused, seamless UX.
We're proud to have built something that is original and could have actual purpose, with added features and proper backend. We've learnt a lot in these 48 hours and that has been one of the best accomplishments.

What we learned

Mimicking the actual product development cycle was one of our biggest learnings. We started with ideation, followed by a proper design process, (thanks to the UX Designer in our team) and finish with development and deployment, all while working as a team which was an educative experience in on itself.

Working on a project about mental health made us research about it and we have now become so much more aware about the topic. We built a project that has potential of actually making a difference and we are super proud that we were able to make it.

We got our hands dirty in CSS and JavaScript, but building such a large website exposed us to the beautiful nuances of the languages. We've all emerged as better developers and designers and only hope to grow more.

Last but not the least, we learnt how to use a custom domain name and successfully host our site with it!

What's next for Wavelength

We hope to properly integrate the backend, complete with multiple databases and user profiles. We have also thought of some additional features such as:

Adding a community feed, where users can anonymously post online for all of the community to view.
Add a chat assistant for any PTSD related questions.
A feature to filter out potential trigger letters from other senders using Sentiment Analysis as well as simple text analysis. The user, while signing up, can mention their possible trigger words. Every letter received will be cross-checked with the listed triggers and rejected or accepted by the server itself so that the user does not have to deal with these issues.