Demian

Inspiration

Hermann Hesse! Friedrich Nietzsche! In my darkest hour when sorrow and solitude seized my soul, these great figures helped me overcome adversity and discover my true self. In his renowned novel Demian, a German-Swiss poet and novelist Herman Hesse depicts the story of a protagonist named Emil Sinclair who constantly receives invaluable help from his mystical friend Demian throughout his life, only to realize that the strength of his friend resides within himself. Demian leaves Sinclair, saying, “You will have to listen within yourself, then you will notice that I am within you.”

Our app Demian is a journey to your true inner self. Nowadays, human beings are bombarded with videos and pictures on social media that distract them from looking into the depths of their souls, causing the unconscious loss of self-identity. What is the essence of technology? What is the true purpose? Is it not the betterment of our lives? What better lives without our true selves?

We strive to breathe new life into the traditional ways of doing things by embracing innovation. Through the power of Artificial Intelligence, we aim to refresh and leverage the traditional journaling experience, making it more delightful, encouraging, and fun, while still honoring its core essence. Inspired by the idea of helping individuals on their journey of self-discovery towards inner strength, we aim to create a highly personalized platform to empower individuals to write, journal, and express themselves. Through your journals, Demian gets to know more about you. In the chat feature, Demian takes on a certain figure and gives you the wisdom and guidance to overcome your adversity. Are you heart-broken? Do you not have the strength to overcome your sorrow yet are hesitant to speak to other individuals, including your own family members? Ask Demian. Our goal is to support vulnerable groups, such as the youth and elderly, who are increasingly affected by the this world of self-loss as well as mental health issues that come with it.

What it does

Demian is at its core a journaling app that has three main functionalities:

Journaling Functionality

1. Journal Entry:
   • User is able to write and save diaries.
2. Journal Response:
   • Get insights features allow user to get insights from their journal
   • AI-generated writing prompts (from self-help/philosophy books) to help users explore their thoughts and feelings in a more structured and meaningful way.
   • AI suggests resources/write response (quotes from books, related articles/podcasts) based on user’s diary understanding to help users gain new insights and perspectives.
   • "Draw my day" feature: Use Dall-E 2 to helps users create a picture based on their diary or current emotions, allowing them to express themselves visually.
3. Progress Tracking:
   • Monthly summary/highlights
   • People you have met
   • Personalized insights and feedback that help users see how far they've come (analysis of emotional state and progress)
   • New inspiration and guidance.

Chat Functionality

1. Life Coach/Advisor:
   • Users can receive AI-generated responses from different characters, philosophers, or thinkers to help them navigate their inner journey.
     • Life Coach: Jesus
     • Mindfulness coach: TBA
     • Love Advisor: TBA
   • The AI uses knowledge learned from user's diaries to provide more informed and personalized responses (different from other chatbots).

Mental Health Support Functionality

1. Societal Impact Feature:
   • The app passively detects suicidal thoughts using GPT model/NLP under user’s consensus
   • Provides resources and support such as connecting users with a therapist, providing hotline numbers for immediate help, and contacting the user's trusted friends or family members (pre-set initially) to let them know about the situation.
   • Helpful tips and techniques for managing anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues.

How we built it

We collected their user's journals in form of strings and we used Firebase in the back end to store them. We used ChatGPT API as a Natural Language Processing model which takes each journals iteratively and requests for a response. We also used DallE API for our "Draw my Day" feature that generates the "state-of-the-art" image of the user's journal. Since requesting would not give us an optimal response, we did research on prompt engineering and used it in different request to API. We also trained a ML model for sentiment analysis (however, we did not integrate it to our firebase backend due to the limited time frame). For our UI pages, we designed in Figma and implemented using React and Next.js.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our project has achieved several notable accomplishments that we are proud of. Firstly, our idea is innovative in injecting new energy and vitality into the traditional journal writing field. In addition, we persevered and successfully developed a working prototype in just two days, incorporating front-end, back-end, and database connectivity artificial intelligence models. Our team conducted extensive prompt engineering and experiments to optimize their performance. Lastly, we strongly believe that our project has the potential to scale and create positive social impacts, particularly for the youth and elderly by addressing mental health issues. Our team is highly diverse, with members from varying backgrounds and possessing unique skill sets. Despite our differences, we were able to successfully develop a complex system by leveraging the strengths of each team member.

What's next for Demien

We will keep working in enhancing data privacy from our users. Furthermore, our AI model continues to evolve, enabling us to gain deeper insights into our users and their preferences, ultimately helping them become more creative content creators.

Built With

• ai
• api
• firebase
• machine-learning
• nextjs
• react