As university students, we deal with so much academic stress and career pressure. Sadly, we often neglect our mental health and social interactions. We wanted to create an app that not only encourages a positive lifestyle, but also brings back the sense of community that we all need.
That’s why we created SmileQuest to make improving mental health fun and socially engaging. Our goal was to create a supportive space where users could share their achievements, big or small, and receive support from friends, helping to build a “smiley-er” community! 😊
SmileQuest is a social media platform that promotes mental wellness through daily quests. You can log in to SmileQuest as a user to start your mission for better mental health!
Every day, users will receive single-player or multiplayer tasks like "Go touch grass," "Do 5 push-ups," or "Talk with your parents about your day."
Users can complete these quests, and earn points that can be saved for in-app rewards! The more quests you complete, the more rewards you’ll get. You can also check out the weekly leaderboard to see who has the top score! 🏆 You can share your epic quests with your friends and families, and you can also check out what others are up to.
We’re also thrilled to introduce our virtual friend, Smiley, powered by the ChatGPT API! 🤖 They will provide friendly, empathetic, and helpful responses, just like your closest friends in real life! 💬
We built SmileQuest using a combination of various technologies. For the frontend, we used React Native with TypeScript to run our UI/UX. The backend and database were also powered by TypeScript, along with Express and Firebase DB.
For navigation management, we used React Navigation. React Navigation ensured a seamless user experience across different devices. Additionally, to test the ChatGPT API, we utilized Postman for testing. Finally, Firebase DB helped us maintain a robust and streamlined database, managed by efficient and quick POST/GET requests.
One of the major challenges we faced was integrating the ChatGPT API.
It took extensive training to provide realistic and supportive responses consistently. But more importantly, we needed Smiley sounding like a real heart-warming person, rather than a robot. This required fine-tuning and handling various edge cases in conversations within our restricted character limit. 🤖❤️
We also encountered many hardships with navigation and initializing the project structure. Thorough troubleshooting and adjustments had to be done to make sure our app was easy to read and navigate. Finally, we spent a lot of time self-studying Firebase DB, due to its outdated documentation.
We are very proud of successfully transforming ChatGPT into a kind, supportive friend that we can always count on! This feature added a unique character to our app that we are truly proud of.
Additionally, overcoming the navigation challenges and setting up a smooth user experience across different screens was a significant accomplishment. We believe that it is important to note that all of our group members were beginners to React Native before this hackathon! Ultimately, we managed to build a fully functional app implementing everything that we wished to.
Throughout the development of SmileQuest, we learned the importance of detailed planning, structuring of a project, and learning to work with new group members.
Most importantly, we learned what makes these projects special: it is not about the technology, but our ability to identify and solve problems that are unique and relatable.
Moving forward, we plan to add more diverse and personalized quests to keep users engaged. We aim to implement more sophisticated features to make Smiley even more interactive and supportive. 🤝
Expanding the social features to include group quests will further foster a sense of community. Additionally, we will focus on user feedback to continually improve the app's functionality and user experience.
Our ultimate goal is to make SmileQuest a go-to platform for mental health improvement and social interaction! 💬🌍