The idea for CheerUP is inspired and brings to mind by the growing number of university students who are struggling with depression and stress. The students are often required to face challenges not only in their academic studies but also in their daily lives. We, as university students, saw this problem and decided to put an end to this situation. This is how CheerUP was created.

CheerUP, is an aws-based voice-control application that helps students release stress and recover from depression. It chats with the user and detects if the user is upset, then gives advice, shows compassion and communicates calming and motivational messages to make the user feel better.

The techniques we used to build this application include Amazon Web Services(AWS) and Alexa Skills Kit Developer Console. Different intents are created in order to meet the user's different needs and concerns.

During the process of implementing CheerUP, we ran into many difficulties and challenges. As for our team, this is our first time working with Alexa and AWS, and therefore we have very few experiences when dealing with problems. When we were trying to implement a skill for telling the user jokes, the intent had some trouble running, and we kept getting errors from the test runs. In the beginning, we were struggling and had no idea how to solve this problem. But eventually, we figured out where the problem was connecting the javascript to the Alexa and was able to successfully move on once we did some intense problem-solving. The application now will tell the user motivational quotes when they say 'Alexa I'm starting my day.' Another challenge our team faced was the lack of experience our team had. Two of our members have never been to a hackathon so getting two members adjusted to Canada's biggest hackathon was not an easy first time. Learning how to work together with strangers in such a short time can also be a challenge. Finding a path that combines everyone's ideas and makes everyone happy can be a struggle. We were able to overcome these challenges by setting realistic goals for ourselves and creating a project that solved a problem that we were all passion about and finding a small solution to it that we all felt confident in creating. We also took the time to explore several different options and feel them out before we decided on a specific project. Many of us are newer to programming and were able to learn so much from the experience. Not only did we solve a problem that some of us personally suffer from but we also made a huge advancement in our own programming experience.

There are many accomplishments that we are particularly proud of. This is our first time working with AWS and designing Alexa skills, and we had zero experiences. On day one, none of us thought that we can finish an application and have it running smoothly. But eventually, we did it and went far beyond our original goals.

We have learned many new skills and techniques from this experience, including AWS, Alexa skills, Node.js, and JSON.

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