Inspiration
We know a lot of people struggle in mental health issues and sobriety, especially in college, and we wanted to make an app in honor of Drew, a BU student who passed away due to overdosing. We hope to spread awareness and support everyone going through a hard time. We wanted to make sure there was an alternative to isolating yourself when you are going through a tough time-- we wanted an app that promotes friendship, communication, and accountability! We are here for you, and so is everyone on our app.
What it does
The goal of our app Sober Steps is to make friends and reduce loneliness, stress, and anxiety while on the road to recovery. Through the pairing of mentors to mentees, we seek to connect those with alcohol use disorder with someone looking to give back to the community and/or pay it forward, in hopes of holding each other accountable and giving them a shoulder to lean on when times get tough.
How we built it
After the initial brainstorming of the app Sober Steps, we created it's UX/UI layout framework in Figma. The original idea was to create an IOS application using XCode and Swift and then implement either CoachroachDB or Node.js with SQL for the backend. However, due to many technical difficulties with XCode and Swift from incompatibility of our laptops and updates/versions after over 9 hours of debugging and downloading various files, we had to scratch our initial plan and come up with other languages/platforms to code and deploy our app on. Then, we tried to do the front end and back end with Android Studio. However, after trying to make this work for many hours, we unfortunately had to switch our method in trying to make this project a reality as there were very little and very outdated demos and youtube videos available on the internet, and we did not have enough time. In the end, after working non stop, the full 24 hours with no sleep, we were not about to give up. Instead, we were able to create a webpage of the sign-in dashboard of the app after talking to many different mentors throughout the night. The logo was an original idea of our team to promote inclusivity and a feeling of togetherness - as otters would typically swim holding hands. Although we have long ways to go before the app is fully functional, we believe that once released, Sober Steps will be a great application for connecting with people to help those recovering from substance use disorder!
Challenges we ran into
There were so many challenges! We were all beginners so we did not have enough knowledge to just begin the project directly. Instead, we had to watch many hours worth of tutorials, implementing these tutorials in an appropriate manner, and then later realizing that the code we were writing was outdated/ wasn't able to be implemented with the certain frameworks we did. For instance, one person made the front end with Swift and another made the UI with Figma. There was so much brainstorming and so much working through our learning curve, that it seemed almost impossible to finish in time. However, the more time we spent, we were able to become motivated and keep trying, despite feeling bad about our slow progress. In the end we made a website version of our application because we could not figure out how to make the mobile app without any prior knowledge of making these apps.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are so proud of working nonstop, despite the huge learning curve. Although we got sad many times and were dissuade many times, we didn't give up hope! We kept reminding ourselves that we are beginners in coding apps, and that a learning curve is to be expected, and that we are here to learn first and foremost. Our persistence is what we are the most proud of! We worked till the very last minute!:)
What we learned
We learned so much! We learned many different frameworks and coding languages in the process of building this project. From SQL, Xcode, Swift, Twillio, Node.js, CochroachDB, to Android Studio, we learned so much!
What's next for Untitled
We will be continuing to work on this project in our free time in hopes of creating a fully functional iOS mobile application and actually launching it on the App Store and creating a marketing strategy to raise awareness about our app!
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