Daily MOOd
Winter/Spring 2023 Spark Project
Introduction
Daily MOOd is an innovative mobile app, aiming to empower UC Davis students in understanding and managing their emotions effectively. This comprehensive app serves as a personal mood tracker and journal, enabling users to gain deeper insights into their daily emotional experiences. By utilizing smart word suggestions, users can accurately verbalize their emotions and create a comprehensive record of their mood. Daily MOOd also provides a calendar view to observe mood trends over time, promoting self-awareness and emotional well-being. Additionally, the app offers a login feature to save personal data. To further enhance productivity, Daily MOOd includes a study timer with a selection of calming backgrounds. Our project aims to provide UC Davis students with a mental health tool to track emotions, improve self-reflection, and enhance overall well-being.
The Team
Avantika Sharma — Project Manager
Lauren Hong — Designer
Megan Mok — Designer
Alejandra Velasco — Developer
Jessica Trans — Developer
Shubhada Martha — Developer
Etienne Rousseau — Developer
Yasmin Aref — Developer
Grisha & Minh-tu — Project Mentors
Timeframe
Jan — Jun 2022 | 16 weeks
Tools
React Native, React.js, HTML/CSS Express, Node, Figma, MongoDB,
The Project
This is our complete app demo made on Figma by the designers, which demonstrates our different features such as the log-in page, mood tracker, calendar, and study timer:
https://youtube.com/shorts/eZPZQKYKGAg?feature=share
Over here, you can see the developed version of these features such as the log-in page and the timer.
Design
For our design process, it was split into three main components: research, ideation, and prototyping.
For the research phase, we obtained quantitative and qualitative data through 1-on-1 interviews with select UC Davis students and a broader survey. We also did comparative analysis by choosing select apps that had features in common with what we wanted to create.
For the ideation phase, we did multiple exercises within our team such as Crazy 8’s where all the team members sketched out potential ideas for the app. We did verbal brainstorming sessions and team collaborative activities as well.
For the prototyping phase, we began with grayscale lo-fi prototypes, later translating into mid-fis with a color scheme, and then our final wireframes which represent our app today.
Here are the lo-fi prototypes done in grayscale showing our two primary components of the mood tracking and study timer.
We then created mid-fi prototypes which began to include the color scheme, as well as refined versions of the logos and colors.
After our mid-fis, for our final prototypes, we decided to shift our color scheme to a more neutral base with backgrounds, design a new logo, and change the gradients of emotions.
The final figma demo of our features including the calendar and log-in page was shown above in the Projects section.
Development
Our development process began by first building the proper back-end routes to access the necessary data for our app. After that, we began to build a basic front-end of our app’s primary features to ensure that the routes were working. We then shifted to developing the larger components such as the background-choosing feature, the timer, etc. After these components were functional, we styled the components and the front-end to match the hi-fi designs the designers built. At the end, we worked on debugging and ensuring full functionality of the app.
The software architecture of Daily MOOd follows a client-server model, consisting of a backend, frontend, and external APIs. The backend communicates with a MongoDB database, where user data is stored in the cloud. When a user interacts with the app, the frontend sends requests to the backend, which queries the database and responds with the requested data. Additionally, the frontend integrates with a Word Suggestions API to provide intelligent suggestions for users to express their emotions accurately. This architecture ensures communication between the backend, frontend, and external APIs, enabling our app to be properly functional.
Takeaways & Challenges
Proactive and efficient communication is essential.
Managing timing conflicts and allocating tasks within a large group, especially as college students with demanding schedules, proved to be a significant challenge during our project. Balancing academic commitments, extracurricular activities, and other responsibilities made it difficult to find mutually available time slots for collaboration. To address this, we prioritized open communication, frequently sharing our availability and updating the team on our schedules. Adopting a hybrid workflow of in-person meetings and asynchronous work allowed us to accommodate diverse schedules and working styles, ensuring progress and maximizing productivity. Despite the initial challenges, we successfully allocated tasks based on individual strengths and preferences, fostering collaboration and overcoming scheduling obstacles.
Be flexible and adjust to changing circumstances.
We faced a significant challenge during the project when we had to change our approach to user profiles. Initially, we planned to use Google authentication, but we ran into a problem that made it hard to integrate and maintain. To adapt to the situation, we quickly decided to switch to a standard username-password login system instead. This taught us the importance of being flexible and adjusting our plans when things don’t go as expected. We learned that it’s crucial to be ready for changes and find alternative solutions to keep the project moving forward. By making this adjustment, we overcame the issue and ensured progress, showing us the value of being adaptable and delivering a functional app to our users.
As a team, we express sincere appreciation to one another, our project mentors, and CodeLabs for the collective effort and dedication in bringing the Daily MOOd app to fruition. This hard work has resulted in a valuable tool that holds great potential in benefiting the UC Davis community.
