Nafs Care

Some of the user onboarding screens
Some of the other screens in the app (both user and scholar view)

Inspiration:

We have been users of multiple Q&A platforms, searching for answers to questions we have always had about Islam. In the end, we found ourselves somewhat unsatisfied with the answers we found and desired more depth than what currently exists. Some of our questions were too personal for us to feel comfortable asking in public and we wanted to ensure that the answers were from a credible source who had religious knowledge of Islam, so we tried turning to our local scholars, but lack of access made us unsuccessful in our endeavor to learn. This is a problem many millennials and other generations face, and we do not really have a platform that can allow them to meet those needs. We want to create a solution for those with knowledge and those who seek knowledge of Islam.

What it does:

There are two main parts to the application:

Forum a) Users can anonymously ask questions that are publicly viewable by other users and get answers from different scholars on the topic. b) Beneficial to the community as a whole

Chat a) Users can ask questions anonymously and chat with scholars if they feel uncomfortable asking questions publicly or need to discuss their situation one-on-one with a scholar b) Scholars would be assigned to users based on their location and question category

How we built it:

Freba: Figma (UX/UI Design) Mohamed: Built the UI using React Native (Front-end) Arslan: NestJS/KeystoneJS/Postgres (Back-end) Abdu: NestJS/KeystoneJS/Postgres (Back-end)

Challenges we ran into:

Some of the earlier challenges we experienced was understanding whether this product is something Muslims actually need and if current Q&A platforms are not addressing their needs. Because there was limited time to actually conduct research, we made a hypothesis and built the app on some assumptions.

Hypothesis:

Muslims need religious guidance from an expert, but are unable to connect with a scholar to get guidance and seek knowledge. a) Embarrassed to ask question / fear of social stigma b) Don’t have access to a scholar / don’t know a scholar
Scholars want to educate the Muslim ummah but don’t have the resources to reach a wider audience.

We also had to think about branding and design user flows for two different types of users (scholars and users of the app).For the front-end, we had to figure out how to use React Native to prepare the MVP of our app and utilized best practices. For the back-end, trying to get authentication for the API to work was a struggle. NodeJs has multiple libraries to allow for authentication, but they required path access, which Keystonejs did an override on for the graphql API. Keystonejs has an internal way of doing API access control, which allowed specific users to authenticate and read certain data, but that was username and password based. Also, once someone authenticates, the authentication stays valid until unauthenticated by API, which leads to a problem where if we authenticate via our app, which should have read/write access, anyone who accesses the API while our app is authenticated would be able to manipulate data. Going forward, we want to do more research on authentication and implement it to make the API secure.

What we learned:

This is the first time we all worked in a sprint cycle and going through the entire product development process within two weeks was a challenging yet enriching experience. Freba learned about what it is like working closely with a front-end developer and how vital it is to ensuring the implementation of the UI is pixel-perfect. Mohamed learned about mobile development through React Native. Arslan learned about how to use different tools like graphql, nestjs, keystone, and different js packages.

What's next for Nafs Care:

Our goal is to build a platform which, simply put, makes it easy to ask a question and get a relevant answer from an expert. Post-Hackathon, we plan to get to a closed beta within a month so we can share it with selected users to collect feedback. After that, for the next four to five months we plan to launch an open beta to get broader feedback and test the stability of the product. We then plan on launching the app and will continue to work on a responsive solution while brainstorming additional features.