Islands Within | Devpost

Inspiration

Islands Within aims to be a visual AI-powered journal inspired by the emotional landscape portrayed in the children’s film Inside Out. It reimagines the emotions as a series of floating islands—each representing a core emotion that shapes who we are. Through a simple, stylized 3D world, the project invites users to explore their inner terrain, reflect on personal growth, and recognize that identity is not a single narrative, but an archipelago of experiences.

What it does

There are 6 islands that represent the following emotions: joy, gratitude, growth, sadness, anger, and anxiety. The user will store their memories on one of these islands in the form of a building per memory. The more memories stored on that particular island, the more buildings there will be. Users can input their memories as text, which will then be summarized by Gemini and converted into a building on the island. If the user clicks on a specific building, they can see the date the memory was created and an AI-generated summary of it, along with words of encouragement or praise. They can also see an AI-generated summary of how they have been feeling throughout the past day, week, or month, based on their previous memories.

Purpose

The purpose of this website is to help users journal their thoughts and memories while also receiving encouragement and tracking their emotions over time. Rather than treating emotions as problems to fix, the platform acknowledges that every emotion—joy, anger, fear, sadness—is valid and natural. There is no “right” or “wrong” way to feel. By visualizing emotional patterns across days, weeks, and months, the website allows users to see their inner landscape more clearly. The greatest value of the product lies not in changing emotions, but in helping users recognize them. When emotions are seen, named, and reflected upon, they become easier to understand—and less overwhelming.

How we built it

We built the backend with FastAPI, Pydantic, Google GenAI, and SQLite. As for the frontend, we built it with Three.js and React.js + Vite. Each component on our page is made with individual 3D shapes, which are pieced together to make a unique shape, such as a building and an island.

Challenges we ran into

For many of us, this was our first time doing frontend, let alone using 3D rendering technology. We ran into many problems debugging the 3D rendering, as well as how to position everything. We also had some issues fetching the backend in the frontend, especially to render preexisting buildings upon refresh.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Three of our team members are first-time hackathon hackers. We are proud that we were able to gain more experience in things like React, Three.js, FastAPI, etc. For some of us, this was our first time working on a project with other people, so we were able to gain experience in collaborating with git.

What we learned

We learned how to use new frameworks and libraries, such as FastAPI and Three.js. We also learned how to work together as a team, be on the same page for our product, and produce a fully functioning app within 36 hours.

What's next for Islands Within

Within the allotted time for IrvineHacks, we weren’t able to implement a couple of features that we had planned, one of those features being able to save your information into an account and then being able to view the islands of your friends. For privacy's sake, you wouldn’t be able to see the notes personally, but instead the number of buildings on each island. Another feature we planned to add was to be able to view notes from a certain month or year instead of all notes ever made.