Safe Mindspace

The one-stop shop for your mental health and relaxation.

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Inspiration

Who is not stressed out by COVID-19? All of our team members noticed how the pandemic has intensified the amount of stress students like us are facing. Acknowledging the detrimental effects negative emotions can have on one’s health, we wanted to design a product that can address individuals’ mental health needs. Safe Mindspace is created to offer a safe space for users to lessen their burden. The ultimate goal is to promote the importance of self-care, and we hope to encourage everyone to take care of and monitor their health on a regular basis, and actively seek help whenever necessary.

What it does

Safe Mindspace is made to support students who experience anxiety due to academic, social, financial, and career pressure. The website (domain: safemind.space) has information on mental wellness and resources, recommended activities that are COVID friendly, and interactive tools aimed at helping individuals get out of a bad cycle of anxiety. These include a to-do list that allows individuals to arrange their tasks and focus on a few important things, so they won’t be overwhelmed. This takes a proactive step towards facing issues of anxiety head-on, rather than procrastinating, which is known to cause further anxiety. We do recognize that anxiety cannot always be tackled head on, so we designed a tool for free-writing (or venting), accepting, and letting go of bad or poisonous thoughts. Finally, the website includes a meditation tool with soothing music for those who just need a breather and to regain their presence.

How we built it

HTML, CSS and Javascript were used to build everything from the information pages to the interactive tools. We utilized tips from the web development and other workshops we attended, as well as looked to the Internet to gain our understanding of many front-end concepts (such as JQuery, time delay functions, and responsiveness). We tested different aspects of the website (i.e. the interactive interfaces as well as the random-sequence generators) to ensure proper functionality. Additionally, we also made sure that our website was responsive, so that it does not obstruct user experience. In terms of design, we had simplicity in mind for the website to be accessible to all individuals. With large fonts, the use of negative space, and the minimal use of colors all weigh into the accessibility and practicality of this website.

Challenges we ran into

Our team is composed entirely of first-time hackers! All three of us are quite new to coding, and unfamiliar with all components of web development. As a result, we faced a lot of constraints as to what and how we can create the project within the given amount of time via our limited skillset. However, this also highly motivated us into wanting to equip ourselves with better technical skills in order to create our desired product. After hours of attending workshops offered, bingeing a lot of follow-along videos and learning from mentors and open source code on the web, we were able to produce an end-product that we are proud of.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are, first and foremost, proud of coming together and collaborating very smoothly as a team. Everyone was very open to ideas and was willing to help one another, depending on our backgrounds and skill sets. Since most of us are completely new to web design, and all new to Javascript, we are proud of putting together a working product that has the basic functionalities to help a common issue among a wide variety of people. With no Javascript knowledge, we are proud that we were each able to learn and implement solutions for the interactive tools in such a short amount of time. We also had a lot of fun!

What we learned

We learned that, although we don’t have much knowledge in coding, we were able to provide viable solutions for self-care and mental health. This was mostly due to teamwork and sufficient planning prior to the coding portion. We also learned to push our limits and recognize how much further we could go if we continue to do so. Initially, we were very hesitant to create an interactive website due to our lack of knowledge. However, once we pushed past the hesitation, we realized, with some effort, we surprised ourselves and made this website better than we originally imagined. From this, we became more confident in our skills and more motivated to utilize more tools to reach further in our future projects and hackathons.

What's next for Safe Mindspace

When we are more familiar with web development, it would be great to improve the existing features by increasing the complexity of our current tools. For example, we can allow users to enjoy a wider range of meditation activities on Meditation Space, provide users with filtering options to filter incomplete/halfway completed tasks on Priority Space, and increase the number of ways we can manipulate the vented out thoughts, or allow people to comment on other’s thoughts on Venting Space. With more users, a community space could be created for people to encourage and support each other through tough times and share their stories.

Another possible direction can be developing a mobile application version of the website. This can enable users to access the provided features even more conveniently. For instance, working with other self-care applications like Calm.com, iOS’ Health application, and menstrual cycle apps for women could help track other aspects of health or mood disturbances contributing to feelings of anxiety.

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