CalmCloud

Inspiration

During the pandemic, we saw so many people who were struggling with their mental health. Whether it was the fact that they couldn't meet with friends and family, or that they felt as if they had been locked away from everything, or they were just plain bored, these people needed help. We used these experiences and memories to create pages that would be useful to someone struggling with their mental health. Thus, CalmCloud was born.

What it does

CalmCloud gives people an outlet to simply relax and find mental health resources if they need them. We created 4 pages: a home page, which gives you affirmations to keep you positive; an arcade page, with two small games you can play to take your mind off things; a breathe page, which helps you calm down through breathing exercises; and finally, a resources page that provides additional help to those that need it.

How we built it

We started this buiding journey by brainstorming. We all hopped on a zoom meeting and used a jamboard to come up with vareious ideas. Through this process we were able to find different ideas that we eventually combined into one. Once we had these ideas, we used Procreate to sketch out how we wanted our website to be layed out. Thus, we began coding. We built CalmCloud using HTML, CSS, Java, and JavaScript in a coding platform called Brackets to actually enterprite our code. Each member of our group would take one page to build, and then we would switch computers to find bugs and things we could make better. Again, we used Procreate, this time to make and save images that we used in our final project. Lastly, we combined our code onto one computer and added it to the Github.

Challenges we ran into

We had a lot of challenges during this entire process. Mostly because, it was our first time. We underestimated how much time things would take, which led us to cram during the final day. We are all also beginners in all of the programs we used, and werent sure how we could implement certain things. We ended up using Google and YouTube alot to guide us on how we were going to build CalmCloud. When we were trying to share our code to eachother's computers, we found alot of bugs that apeared on one's laptop and not another's. This really through us off, as we had to make alot of time to debug code that we thought was okay.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud of how we ended up being able to work together as a team. Even though we had lots of sturggles, we were able to push through and produce a working product that could potentially help others. Though we all aren't that expirienced with coding in these languages, we persevered and we were able to make jokes and laugh along the way.

What we learned

We learned a bunch of new coding skills and tricks that we can definitely implement in the future, however that is the least of what we have gained through this expirience. We learned important collaboration skills. For example, when we were working on code and it broke, we were able to come together to figure out what change made the result the way it was. We figured out each of our strengths and stuck to them, which allowed us to get more done in a shorter amount of time. We learned problem-solving skills; When one thing isn't working, what could. We learned that breaking code isnt always a bad thing. And most importantly we learned when to say something isnt worth our time. All of these skills arent just used for coding, but things we can apply to everyday life.

What's next for CalmCloud

We had alot of ideas for CalmCloud that we werent able to implement in the time given. In the future, we could possibly make CalmCloud an app that anyone can download on their phones. With more expirience, we think think that this could definitely be a possibility, not just for a hackathon, but also to help others. We also think that with more learning, we could add more animations and more interactive elements to make it more user friendly. We think that CalmCloud has a bright future.