memo | Devpost

Inspiration

When I was 14 years old, I, Carlos, faced one of the most terrifying moments of my life -- my friend attempting suicide. Fortunately, nothing bad happened. But it is those moments when you contemplate the frightening nature of suicide. After dealing with this situation, and through the years, I heard a lot of stories from people feeling lonely. So, our team developed memo.

What it does

memo is an AI mental health advisor that helps to prevent suicide and makes sure that you do not ever feel alone. memo uses natural language processing and users communicate with memo using their voices. If users are at risk of committing suicide, memo calls the user's contacts.

How we built it

Memo is built using the Open AI API. We used this API to generate human like responses, converting speech to text and test to speech. We used the Django framework to manage all the backend. We built a minimalist modern interface using only HTML, CSS and JavaScript. We also used Twilio API to manage calls when risky situations are detected.

Challenges we ran into

During the develop we faced a lot of challenges comprising converting speech to text, login to memo from the homepage, and having memo make phone calls. But the most challenging of all was connecting backend and frontend. As unexperienced developers, we didn't know even where to start. Some of us had previous experience with Django, but only the basic, so connecting the OpenAI generated responses to the interface and receiving the recording from the frontend to the backend was a pretty difficult challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

memo is a website compatible with mobile devices, regardless of screen size or operating software. memo is also free of charge and can talk to people using voice in several languages. This ensures that memo reaches a wide range of audiences. We are really proud to be building this, and we really think that this project can make a huge different. For us the worst thing that can happen to a depressed person is to be alone, so we provide something to talk to and take care of you.

What we learned

Most importantly, we learnt to manage temporary files to make calls and generate accurate responses. This project also brought us a lot of new knowledge, such managing APIs, making better webpages, and building projects from scratch.

What's next for memo

Memo is meant to be something helpful. We want to focus on improving both the backend and frontend of our project, especially focusing on improving the speed of the responses and the intuitivity of the page. We also want to partner up with psychologists and psychiatrists so users can get professional medical advice from them.