MentallyAware

Inspiration

Mental health is a common problem throughout various demographics and age groups, most notably high schoolers. Being a high schooler at an especially competitive high schooler, I was able to see the detrimental effect that poor mental health can have on students, friends, and classmates, which is why I was inspired to create this app, in order to do something about it.

What it does

This app has 3 main functionalities: Goals, Quiz, and Games. The Goals section allows the user to set and complete various goals for themselves, in order to work towards improving their mental health. The Quiz section offers two quizzes (stress levels and sleep), in order to help to the user pinpoint what could be negatively affecting their mental health, and what they can do to improve these factors. Finally, the Games section offers two different activities (a random activity generator and a mindful breathing exercise) to help the user relax and unwind. The random activity generator suggests various activities that the user could take part in to destress, while the mindful breathing activity leads the user in an breathing exercise. Throughout the whole app, the user can also earn points for doing any of the activities, which further increases the user's motivation to participate in this app and work towards improve their mental health.

How we built it

This app was built on Replit C++. The UI is text-based commands, because Replit doesn't support screen-based UI for C++. I had originally wanted to build this as a fully mobile app, built in Android Studio, but soon realized that the time I had available wasn't enough for me to create a completed Android Studio app with all the components I had wanted to include, so I changed my plans to incorporate all the features.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge I ran into was time. Because it was only 24 hours, I had to improvise and change my original plans quite significantly. Furthermore, because I was working alone, I wasn't able to complete as much in the time allowed. As a result, I decided to keep the app simple for now, and work on making it more complicated in the future.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Overall, I was proud to create a fully functional application that included the majority of the features I wanted to include, even though it was on the simpler side. Furthermore, I'm especially proud that I was able to create this whole project in C++, because it isn't my main programming language, and I don't have too much practice with it.

What we learned

With this project, I struggled with trying to figure out which features to discard in the early stage of my app. However, by the end, I have learned that it's better to first perfect the simpler features of a program, rather than worrying about more innovative and more complicated features that might not always work out or make sense to the user.

What's next for MentallyAware

In the future, I hope to convert this app to a mobile app. I originally wanted to use Android Studio to create visual UI for my app; however, I ended up not having enough time to do this, and instead had to stick with command-based UI. However, in the future, I want to add visual UI, and also hopefully add some AI elements, such as a situation predictor, which can predict the patterns of the user's mental health based on specific situations and past trends.

Built With

• c++
• replit