Ankkuri

A combined web and voice mental health application

by Ashleigh Hyslop, Bianca Jemsten, Catherine Oxley and Isabel Lewis

Overview

Ankkuri was built during the Junction Hackathon in Helsinki 2019. It's a combined web and voice application that generates a personalised morning routine for users. The user fills out a profile about themselves in the voice app which then powers the voice journey which can be accessed through an Alexa. The name Ankkuri comes from the Finish word for anchor. We chose this because anchoring is a method that uses good habits to reinforce positivity in your day and lower stress and anxiety.

See the webapp hosted on Netlify here: Ankkuri.life .

To use the application

Use Chrome to ensure features work as intended
The voice app is not yet publicly available as the skill isn't published

Technologies used


React	JavaScript(ECMAScript6)	Styled Components
Babel	Webpack	Node.js
DynamoDB	Lambda	Cognito
API Gateway	Alexa	Netlify

Repository set up

This repository contains both the backend and the frontend for the apps. ankkuri-ui has the React frontend whereas ankkuri-service contains the AWS service.

Designs

The designs were made to appeal to a young audience as the mission of the challenge was to prevent mental health issues for young professionals and teenagers. We therefore decided to go with a fun colour scheme and happy lighthearted photos. Throughout the app we also re-used the idea of waves as they symbolise tranquility but also sound waves, which ultimately ties it to the voice application.

Workflow

The team brainstormed ideas for the application and the voice journey together and then divided up the work into different areas. We did this to be as time efficient as possible as we only had about 36 hours to build the application. Two developers focused on the frontend. They divided up components into atoms and molecules before they build out all the pages. They were also responsible for the designs. One developer specialised on integrating the database with the API and the lambda functions for the voice application. Additionally, they also integrated AWS Cognito with both the voice app and the web app. Finally, one developer tested and wrote out the voice journey in Node.js using Lambda to power the Alexa skill.

Disclaimers

Due to the limited time frame, the application was built out as a prototype. There is no algorithm that puts together the voice journey and the site currently only displays a mock user we've created. However, the user information is coming from the DynamoDB databse. This means that changes in the databse actively change the voice journey. Signing up for the application in the Alexa skill does generate a user in Cognito and DynamoDB but due to the user in the web app being hard-coded a user could today only change their preferences directly in the databse.