Wellness Arcade

Build consistent healthy routines while playing fun games

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Inspiration

Taking care of one’s wellbeing can be a struggle in a fast-paced environment, particularly if we face mental health issues. Keeping up with daily self-care tasks, such as brushing teeth or drinking water, can become overwhelming and a source of shame.

Keeping this problem in mind, we developed this web app to help users gain more power over their daily routines, but in a fun way. The gamified interface acts as a motivational tool, taking away from the overwhelm and turning self-care into a lighthearted and easier job.

What it does

The web app helps users track health tasks such as drinking water and brushing teeth through daily logging. It also includes activities that focus on mindfulness and building body awareness. This can be done through guided deep breathing, playing a simple game that employs working memory, and exploring emotional responses to various situations.

There is also a way to build a daily affirmation from a given word bank. Overall, the app provides a way to break away from fast-paced routines and build awareness of practices that reward mental health.

How we built it

We started with a discussion of what activities we wanted to focus on. Water intake and brushing teeth were our primary focus, since these health tasks are a daily necessity and thus suffer the most from inconsistent routines.

We also decided to include awareness exercises, such as deep breathing and affirmation building, to create a sense of calm for users as they take a break from their routines to log in to the app. The process involved lots of trial and error, brainstorming, and exploration of how to best reinforce healthy behaviors in a gamified way.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge we faced was our inexperience in developing a comprehensive web app with numerous features under time constraints and small team size. Two particular aspects we struggled with were API integration and deployment; we had trouble figuring out the mechanics in the face of countless crashes.

We navigated these challenges with coordination and patient communication, pouring over documentations and other resources. Though we had the thought to exclude some app features to make the development process more seamless, we were able to pull through in the end with our original ideas materialized and deployed.

What's next for Wellness Arcade

In the future, adding some accessibility features is a viable option. This can include multi-language support, voice guidance and additional activities for folks with specific disabilities.

Another way this can be further improved upon is through adding resources relating to mental health and/or research on habit development pertaining to different lifestyles. This can help users not just take advantage of the gamified interface but also learn how to implement the fundamental principles behind the app onto other aspects of their routines.

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