Inspiration
- Sarah came up with this idea during a hackathon idea generation activity the two of us did
- There are mental health apps. There are also journal apps. But no combos...
What it does
- InspiWriter aims to make good writers and good people with journal prompts. Choose one of many prompts from our three current categories and fill them out whenever you feel like doing so!
How we built it
- We decided to use a client-server side with prompt storage (because what if there's n topics and each has 100 prompts??)
- Our server storage is in a lovely Firebase Database, here we store all the prompts to declutter the app, and the topic idea helps with that. The demo video above is a scenic tour of our server.
- For the app, we developed this for a Pixel running Oreo in Android Studio.
- And of course, we built it with love.
Challenges we ran into
- Learning the finicky side of Android
- Learning how Firebase Databases work
- How to make UI and Firebase Databases agree
- How to make an app that agreed with both of our personal setups
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- We learned Firebase Databases during the course of the event. We're both sophomore Java programmers from Smith College with no experience in any databases.
What we learned
- How Java devs can build an Android app with Firebase Databases
- It's possible to build a simple yet elegant app that uses only one "screen" for your purposes
What's next for inspiwriter
upcoming topics: how to write with diversity; more mental health accommodations such as bpd, disassociative identity disorder; inspiwriter for LGBTQ+ support; NaNoWriMo-inspired prompts; seriously there's so much topic potential for making good writers and good people.
topics + flavor text: As if writing about unconditional love wasn't enough? With a special pack of rules that would change every week (see this is why we love Firebase Databases), you can tack a random rule such as Answer in a language that isn't English, Pig Latin counts. or Answer in only emoji.
daily prompt notifications were something we wanted to accomplish in time for this but because they're hard to configure we'll see them later when we don't have ~36h to make an update
possibly more features as we delve into cool stuff you can do with Firebase and Android, we've only touched the surface here and we both intend to develop this deeper.
We'd also like to make it clear we aim to compete in Viacom's Life Hack Contest and also Optum's Healthcare Hack Contest with our app.
Finally, special thanks to the following lists consulted for our prompts: <1> <2> <3> <4>
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