Apollo-G - Space Apps Challenge

Apollo-G| The Isolation Solution

The Isolation Solution

Social distancing policies enacted the world over during the COVID-19 pandemic have left many people socially isolated. Your challenge is to develop innovative solutions to combat social isolation.

The "Self e-Solution" App

Summary

An app created for isolation scenarios able to keep you busy every day.With tasks and reminders, you will always find interesting ideas to spend your time while staying at home. Just like astronauts in a space mission, the app encourages you to write down your thoughts but also evaluate your performance during the day helping you to stay positive through difficult times. Every weekend you are free to share with the community how you completed your tasks and offer unique ideas.

How We Addressed This Challenge

Complementing the fact that people spend more time on their mobile devices now, more than ever, the app provides the user with the chance to project all of his personal thoughts, feelings and daily experiences. Through the journal, the users expend accumulated psychological load, as well as continuously self-evaluate through questionnaires. The daily reminders keep them flexible, the weekly tasks give them the proper stimulation they need (and help them come back to the app to complete more). They communicate, self-reflect and enjoy the progress being made along with the rest of the community, feeling not pinned in their homes, help people in more need than them and understand the positive effects of self-isolation.

How We Developed This Project

The thought process stemmed mainly from the personal experience of our members. We, along with everyone currently competing, spent months in quarantine and self-isolation, trying to prevent the worst and protect as many people as possible. All of us strove to find ways to spend this time productively and we with the idea of making an app that has all the information gathered. It is a way to involve and activate many more people, especially with the community challenges. We read articles and data from researches about sleep deprivation, practise-action coupling tasks, self evaluation tests and tracking emotional load and experiences through journal keeping (inspired from "space diaries").

Let us explain the layout of the App:

A new user creates a profile, anonymous or not, sets up his passwords and username and signs up that way. The first thing the app does, is ask him some questions based on a scale 1-10 or by letting him input numbers. The questions asked are (besides members living in the house at the moment, age and sex) "How many hours did you spend with your family or at home averagely every day/week prior to the self-isolation?", "How many hours of sleep averagely every day?" etc. The reason is, not only to avoid Daily Reminders like "spend (n+1) more hours with your family today" for people currently living alone, but also to gather data for ourselves.
Every day the app makes self-evaluation tests (Questionnaires), for whom every week gives a choice to the user if he wants to see. These data are gathered by the app and used as statistics and indirect feedback to the user and the developers. However, the most valuable part of this, is that the user puts himself in a situation to ask himself how he feels today. In any result he inputs, he has now more motivation to put an entry more in his journal, an indirect motivation per see, as well as a self-projection. This procedure is usually planned at night, but can be completed any time in general. It should be noted that the app is mainly meant for personal use. There are no likes, follows, subscriptions, comments, shares etc. The user is involved with the rest of the community without considering things like that that put pressure on himself to feel constantly validated of some short.

1) Journal

The journals are especially important to us. This app has taken inspiration from the "space diaries" of astronauts, people that have spent many hours, days, weeks, months and some of them years self-isolated. The idea of writing down your thoughts seems as something old-school but people rarely do this anymore. The app, takes "advantage" of the fact that people spend more time on their phone rather than using a notebook, giving them a more interactive environment. The journal is the "sacred texts" that are being written, to write down thoughts, feelings and experiences in retrospect and more. We have pointed out that unloading psychological pressure and loads is one of the most valuable aspects of getting through self-isolation. If you can't speak up, write it down. Read the thoughts inside your head. You can always come back and read every entry, they are not deleted after a period of time, so that you and only you, can see how far you have grown from then.

2) Tasks

The Weekly Tasks consist of Tasks from the complete collection of "All Tasks", every week in random. They give motive to the users to mobilise, try new things and be productive in times when not doing anything seems like a tempting option. They are random and vary greatly in order to never get bored of them. They provide the user with the stimuli needed to get by and don't get "rusty", spend more time with their family or/and improve their spending time with themselves. These tasks are much needed, so that the user has a reason to come back to the app every day, and get to the point where it's time to start righting down in his journal again. Now he has even more experiences to narrate, to process emotionally and grow from. He can also write some recommendations that helped him do the tasks, for the rest of the Community. You can always see how many people have completed the tasks and how many times if you press onto them at "All Tasks".

3) Reminders

The Daily Reminders are personal pop-ups the user has chosen for himself. They come up so that they remind the user of the essentials. In case of a global pandemic like COVID-19, the user is reminded to wash his hands regularly, avoid touching his face, call his grandparents, contact his friends, drink a lot of water, eat healthy, wear a mask, avoid getting close to other people, stay inside, sleep well and many more. It's a great way to show the user that the app is always active and always tries to help him and give him ideas that are good to pop up in his head frequently too. Healthy habits and sensitivity is the way to go!

4) Community

We know that the app is something personal, a place to trust with your thoughts and feelings, a way to get productive, make progress and stay active throughout every day. However, it is highly important that a person doesn't feel stranded from the world and disconnected from the others. The healthiest way, is through proposing Tasks to everyone else that uses the app. It's an easy way to have fun, make even more memories, be creative and more special than the Weekly Tasks. Everyone can create a new Task in the Community which can be completed at any time, shows how many people have done it, recommendations to complete it and feedback. The most popular ones that people loved, felt hard for them, took time but were worth and for any good reasons like these will be shown every week on the top of the list.