OpenWhen

Inspiration

One of our team members has a close friend who suffers from depression, and mental health in general is a growing issue today. What our team member had learned was that often times, the most beneficial and effective way of helping someone is to be there for them when they need you rather than therapy and medication. However, with busy schedules and/or distance, it can be hard to use one's support system--therefore, having pre-written letters from those loved ones in times of need can help maintain that support system.

What it does

OpenWhen allows users to write and receive "open when" letters to their friends and themselves. Upon creating an account, users can categorize their own letters based on emotions and choose who to send them to. On the main page, they can select these categories and choose notes to read when they're feeling a certain type of way and are in need of a friend.

How we built it

We built the app in the native iOS language, Swift, and Apple's new framework, SwiftUI. We also incorporate Google Cloud through Firebase's real-time database as well as user authentication.

Challenges we ran into

Major challenges for this application was learning SwiftUI, the new Apple framework as well as integrating Firebase into our application while using this new framework.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For the team members unfamiliar with SwiftUI, we were able to learn the fundamentals of it over the 24 hours of the hackathon and have a working project at the end. We also were able to get our Firebase and and user authentication functioning with the new framework.