MemRecall

Inspiration

Alzheimer’s is a detrimental disease that slowly destroys its victims’ ability to remember and think, leading to a significant decrease in quality of life. In today’s world, it has become all the more prevalent, affecting our own loved ones and causing them distress. We wanted to create a website that would help alleviate the complications of having Alzheimer’s, which is what inspired us to create MemRecall!

What it does

The target audience for our website are people who are affected by early-stage Alzheimer’s or are at risk for Alzheimer’s. Recent research has proved that one of the best ways to improve memory and thinking ability in early stages of Alzheimer’s is to have mental stimulation, which is our website’s goal. Our website is complete with several games that provoke the use of memory and critical thinking ability: a slider game, a memory matching game, and a word unscramble game. Our website provides an immediate solution to those struggling, and in a fun way! Our inspiration for this solution was how when we were younger, brain games had often helped us with our critical thinking and memorization. We approached aiding the often “receding brain” of an Alzheimer’s victim the same way we would a “developing brain” of a child. In addition to games, our website also features a page for resources, where we include links to websites that describe the effects of Alzheimer’s, and other helpful resources. We also have a randomly generated new activity to do whenever they would like some inspiration (as research shows that a healthy and productive lifestyle can also prevent the spread of Alzheimer’s). We also have a page for contacts, which are stored based on login information, which can help people with Alzheimer’s remember their loved ones. This page includes the contact’s name, phone number, birthday, occupation, age, and we plan to implement a section that allows the contact’s voice to be recorded and saved with their contact and the option to upload a large, clear visible image to a person’s contact. Having these extra additions to a regular contact will allow the Alzheimer’s patient to be more able to remember people they know. Users will also be able to quickly search for contacts, and we plan to implement calling through our app as well, where the patient will see all the information about a person when receiving the call. Additionally, the patients who download this app will get a daily notification in order to remind them that this app exists and is for their usage.

How we built it

We built this website using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. First, as a group, we made the layout for the initial pages and worked on making sure all the buttons on the top and the navigational buttons were working in a way we wanted them too. Then, we divvied up the tasks, so that each person was working on one page or one game at the same time. When a person finished their task, or reached a difficult spot, we'd pause and re assign what people were working on to maximize everyone's time.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenges we ran into was regarding the contacts table, where it was very difficult to get the contacts to actually save to the user's browser, as well as making the table expandable. Furthermore, we also struggled with the slider game and the word scramble games, as both games had points in their development where there was an error in getting the game to appear, making us stuck for hours at a time trying to get the game to work. Additionally, there was difficulty in deciding what the third game would be, as we were initially going to make it a pattern memory game, but struggled in the execution of it and had to work to decide what game we could make instead.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're most proud of the contacts table, due to the extreme difficulty we had in getting the search bar working and saving the contacts. We're also proud of the turnout of all of our games, as they all experienced roadblocks where we weren't sure how to proceed, and yet were able to continue nonetheless. Also, we're proud of how our site looks design-wise, as we spent a lot of time making sure the colors and images we chose suited the site as a whole.

What we learned

We learned a lot about local storage properties and how to get them to work in the making of the contacts table, as well as a general wider knowledge of Javascript and programming applications with it, as the games we made all contained certain elements that we hadn't ever attempted to do before, and, in the process of creating our games, gained a deeper understanding of.

What's next for MemRecall

Future updates to this website will include a Q&A forum of sorts that allows patients to communicate with each other, as only they truly know what they are going through; if not a true chat forum, utilizing the plethora of new applications of AI in our world now, we can create an AI Alzheimer’s-Expert chatbot. We also plan to add a test to see if you should get checked for Alzheimer’s, for those who feel they’re at risk.

Our Automation Feature

Because our website is dedicated to helping people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's we have a data entry feature allowing the user to store the persons name, phone number, birthday, occupation, age, an any other information they would like to add. There is also a search bar allowing the user to search through all their contacts that have been saved. All data that was inputted into our website is saved on the device it was inputted on. TRYOUT INSTRUCTIONS: -USE THE REPL LINK TO TRY IT OUT