#Out of My Mind

Check it out [here] (http://out-of-my-mind.herokuapp.com), or see it on [devpost] (http://devpost.com/software/out-of-my-mind)!

Inspiration

Meet Catherine. Recently with academic, social, and personal stress, she has relapsed back into depression. In fear of the social stigmatism of mental illnesses, she does not know whom to talk to about this and has not revealed this to anyone. She is currently fighting the battle alone. Late night, when her depression gets the worst of her, she just needs someone to talk to at that moment. With our app Out of My Mind, she can reach out to anyone anonymously and chat with someone who shares a similar experience and understands exactly how she feels.

What it does

A peer-to-peer platform for those who are mentally ill or who simply need an outlet to help resolve their most current worries-- to get their worries out of their minds.

How we built it

We used NodeJS, Socket.io, and JavaScript as our back end, and HTML and CSS/Twitter Bootstrap as our front end.

Challenges we ran into

The learning curve was quite steep as this was a new language for all members of the team. For some, it was also the first time using Git. Hence, the starting of the app of deciding what to do and how to do it, and the wrapping up with merge conflicts in Git were both difficult to complete and overcome.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of complete minimal viable product as beginners without any previous experience. We are also proud and excited that this could potentially make a significant impact to society, by resolving a common issue we see happening, even to the people around us.

What we learned

We learned to program and connect back end services NodeJS, Bootstrap, Socket.io, and JavaScript to front end services of HTML and CSS. We learned how to work as a team in terms of communication, workflow, and Git.

What's next for Out of My Mind

For our vision and additional features: -to turn our web app into an android/ios mobile app to serve a wider audience -to create a database of users' personal experiences and how they may or may not overcome it -to provide data to mental wellness organizations by keeping track of common topics among users -to continue connections between users by allowing them to create accounts and be able to save chat history -to expand the chatting feature from one-on-one chatting into multi-user chatrooms