We are currently living in two pandemics: the virus, and what Forbes calls a stress epidemic. According to a survey conducted by Everyday Health, approximately **1/3 of people visited a doctor about something stress-related, with 57% admitting they’re paralyzed by stress. **
Our group strongly relates with this epidemic. As students, we face many external pressure and deadlines, distracting us from taking care of mind and body. The new online format exacerbated this; the lockdowns coop us at home, and we find that our work and personal lives bleed into our day-to-day.
We find it hard to find external motivation to get us off our seats or simply reflect about how we're feeling amidst our work.
Overall, we needed something that would incite us to take better care of ourselves.
Meet Growww, a mobile app that gamifies self care, making your journey to mental and physical strength/peace easier. It provides users two 30-day challenges they can to commit to: gratitude and self care.
- In the gratitude challenge, users input something they are grateful for each day to grow a plant.
- The self-care challenge gives users a task that will help them stay healthy mentally or physically each day. Once they complete it, a tree grows
Challenges are provided through a chatbot. The chatbot also asks users questions like how they're feeling when they're on the app.
We differentiate ourselves from other self-care apps by incentivising the user. Each time they complete their daily task, a plant grows in their virtual garden. Once they complete the 30 days, their accomplishments are easily shareable with their peers. The app also rewards users with badges along the way regarfing the number of trees they planted.
- Akanksha developed the app mechanics with Flutter
- Chinmayi set up the backend with Firebase
- Aparajita dealt with the chatbot using Dialogflow
- Adriana worked on the branding/design/handoff using Figma
We had so many ideas; it was initially hard to make it all in 24 hours! We were also separated by an 11 hour time difference, so we needed to communicate efficiently and effectively so that each of our components worked together seamlessly. Our biggest challenge was integrating the chatbot to the Flutter app, because it was a first.
Making an app that we can use ourselves and learning a ton of new technologies!
- Implementing a backend with Firebase allowing for two different tracks
- Implementing a chatbot and integrating it with Flutter
- User testing with students/workers in our regions
- Launching it to app store!