Originating from 4 am Discord calls, hundreds of thought provoking messages, and an everlasting "I'm glad we had this conversation", we aspire to extend this feeling of connection to others who are experiencing the negative effects of isolation.
Our app promotes health communication between friends, family, and more by tackling the anxiety that comes with initiating a confessation, a difficult but meaningful conversation. It targets 3 barriers people face when having a confessation:
- Anxiety from confrontation
- Insecurity of being vulnerable
- Concern of overstepping personal boundaries
Features
- Anxiety of confrontation is addressed in the fact that we initiate the difficult conversation topic rather than the user. Our questions are catered to address important issues people may be facing in their day to day lives but are otherwise ignoring.
- We foster a nurturing environment to help overcome the stigma of human flaws and the insecurity that stems from them. Conversation topic filters ("Happy", "Heavy", "To the speaker", and "Self-Reflection") can cater lighter or deeper questions for those who may not feel ready to open up about their flaws.
- Surpasses the fear of overstepping boundaries by adding anonymous cards.
We used React Native for cross-platform mobile development. Next, we used Socket.io for real time two-way communication with an Express back end.
- Font family import in React Native
- Differences between expo and bare React Native workflow
- NPM dependency hell
- JavaScript shenanigans: the difference between working code and crashing was usually 1 to 2 characters
We were able to bring a personal experience that strongly bonded us into an app that can be shared with others. Two thirds of the team do not come from a software development background so being able to develop a presentable product in time was a major feat.
This was our first hackathon (for two thirds of us anyways) and sleep was definitely an important factor we missed. Playing up each team member's strengths was vital to finishing the project as well as team unity. console.log() is the best debugging tool xd
Creating more confessation cards, topics, and maybe building a web version of the app. A long term goal would be implementing a video/voice call function within the app itself.