Mallow

Questions:

What is the problem your solution addresses? (150 word limit):

The problem that Mallow addresses is that people often neglect self care and their mental health due to busy schedules which then leads to mental health issues and loss of self identity. People need a fun way to take care of themselves and address their mental health to overall maintain a sense of self. Busy people need to be encouraged and reminded to take care of themselves in ways that are easy and engaging. This creates barriers to celebrating personal authenticity, exploring identity, and engaging in genuine self-expression.

Why did you pick this solution, and how does it address the problem? (150 word limit):

Mallow addresses this problem by motivating users to check in on themselves through random daily check-ins. These check-ins are focused on mental well-being and self care, with the support of daily AI integrated prompts that spread positive feelings to users nearby. Mallow also has a community feature which allows users to connect with friends and reciprocate similar feelings, promoting authenticity and diversity in the form of community. The different features in mallow promote both authenticity and creativity. Users are encouraged to sketch out a thought or write down a longer journal entry. In order for people to express themselves truly they must be comfortable within themselves; Mallow addresses the root problem of mental health to lead to a better sense of self identity. Through self expression and fostering a community, Mallow users go on a journey of self healing, care, and identity discovery.

We weren't sure if we were supposed to answer the rest of this writeup that is a template by devpost, but we did it just in case. If we were not supposed to, feel free to ignore the following text!

Inspiration

In modern society, academics, work, and personal life can be constant stressors in everyday life. With a busy schedule, many forget that self care is an important part of maintaining a healthy mental well being, and can lead people to lose sight of their own identity and personal needs. As we recently completed finals week, this happened to ourselves, we were inspired to design an app that would help students and others in similar situations mitigate stress and relax. Meet Mallow, the app that will motivate you to practice self care, make friends with others experiencing similar situations, and express your identity to those around you.

What it does

Mallow sends a notification randomly throughout the day that would ask you a simple question, similar to “How are you?” It allows the user to easily come up with a response, and to express themself. It then has follow up questions that would entice the user to draw a quick doodle or take a picture for their given prompt. Finally, it has a share feature, where users can share their self reflection with friends nearby, and view their friends’ posts. However, there are current problems with social media where users tend to compare themselves with others they see online. In order to combat toxicity in social media environments, users are given options to opt out in seeing their friends’ text responses, and only be able to see their posted photos or doodles, effectively removing any form of comparison with the text prompts. Users would also be able to see interesting data, such as streaks, AI powered quotes that would motivate the user, and an emotion tracker that would show how the user felt for the past couple of days. The data would create paths toward deeper self reflection that would lead the user to discover their own identity much more deeply than other forms of self reflection. Overall, the app allows users to be authentic with themselves and others by answering meaningful, thoughtful yet quick to answer questions; build creative self expression by completing photo or doodle activities; and amplify diverse perspectives and voices by sharing users’ unique and authentic experiences with each other.

How we built it

First we thought about several possible user stories, and user level requirements to go along with each user story. Then we created a kanban board to manage our workflow, and began designing our LoFi prototype. Finally, through Figma, we designed our own elements, made our own styles, and completed our HiFi prototype design.

Challenges we ran into

We thought about several ways to mitigate social media stress as our app is mainly about mental health wellness but also having a social media aspect combined with it, which naturally caused conflicts from a design perspective. The main problem was that by having our community page, others might start comparing themselves with other users, thus creating a toxic environment. Our solution was to allow the users to have control over what they want to see, which includes not seeing the text portion of the community post, which would be most vulnerable to comparison.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In our first designathon, we’ve designed over 25 screens, 5 user flows, designed custom elements, all with a small team of 3 and within 40 hours. Not only did we achieve technical feats, but we also had lots of fun in the process. We’re very proud of the work we’ve accomplished through the past 40 hours, yet we’re always looking for ways to improve.

What we learned

Concepts are really important to come up with first. Making sure that we have all our requirements set in stone, our moodboard, color palette, and inspiration is vital before we start designing, otherwise we will end up with problems that halt our progress later on.

What's next for Mallow

We plan to start a full implementation of Mallow on React Native, and possible publish to app distributors in the future.

Built With

• figma