Inspiration
We have all tried various journaling methods in our lives, but we have never managed to stick to them for a long time. Our idea comes from the Forest app, which is a focusing app. It, and now our app, encourages people to have mindful minutes focusing on self-development and mental wellbeing, and at the same time it allows them to immediately see how every act and thought have added to their little park.
What it does
In Memory Park you create your very own park or nature reserve by performing mindful, reflective journaling activities. Each action results in a new tree, plant, animal, or decoration being added to your park. Players are incentivized to use the app for a limited time each day, to develop a healthy habit of self-reflection. The sense of creativity, progression and longevity is further enhanced by limited social features that allow loved ones or otherwise close acquaintances (and even doctors and their patient) to interact with each others representation of mental wellbeing.
How we built it
As none of us know app development, we used the technologies we know, which is web development. We used React for the front-end and Firebase for hosting, database and storage.
Challenges we ran into
We unfortunately ended up not having any artists or UI/UX designers to help with the prototype, which we feel detracts from the overall product, since we think it's so important for a mental health app to be inviting, pretty to look at, and easy to engage with.
From a development perspective: we have not used the game engine we ended up using before, so a lot of the challenges were figuring out the quirks of the engine.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
From the design side, we're proud to have done enough research to understand quite well which gamification mechanics work best with the mental health topic. In the app, we managed to add a lot more social functionality than expected. One of us is also brand new to hackathons and web development, and it has been exciting to work with them and see them learn - their contribution was invaluable.
What we learned
We need to be more careful when deciding to work on a project that ends up requiring significant content to work well, especially if we don't have the relevant artists or designers. Separately, we now understand a little more about interacting with mental health from a gamification perspective (and not as a serious game) - there are several effects of gamification that could potentially have negative outcomes for users and it's crucial not to fall for them on the promise of "more engagement".
What's next for Memory Park
As it is clear, art and UX are the imminent challenges our app needs to face. Beyond that we may need to migrate to a grid-based layout (to mimic such inspirational games like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing) for easier content creation and more uniqueness to the layout of every park. To achieve all this we believe partnering with a mental health organisation would be the best starting point.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.