With COVID-19 forcing most people to stay at home, many have been spending prolonged hours at confined spaces with little to no social interaction. Social distancing is challenging and increases the risk of acquiring mental health issues along with other psychological risks.
Our project is an app which aims to combat the adverse consequences of social distancing through helping individuals meet new people of similar interests and bond with them, while experiencing together “virtual travelling” through the variety of virtual tours accessed from NASA’s official virtual tours and other virtual tours available on the app.
Forming new friendships and expanding one’s knowledge while still following the necessary procedures to avoid COVID-19 infections offers users an opportunity to productively use their time and helps them stay in touch with other people, so they spend less time overthinking or contemplating any negative thoughts that can be prominent during social distancing.
Our inspiration was primarily ignited by studying the fact stating that “isolation for long times could worsen humans mental and psychological status” and our thoughts of how to make the situation better in the light of the current quarantine applied.
Accordingly, our idea is basically an application that would help people stay at home as long as required for combating Covid-19. Besides, it would assist them to get in touch with a community that has similar interests, so that they can make the best out of their spare time with the minimal possible risks while restoring their communication skills.
When we thought about how we can provide these services in an accessible means, we found that the best way was a mobile application downloaded via various mobile operating systems. To achieve such mission, we built the UI/UX of the app to be simple, engaging, and aesthetically pleasing.
We used Nasa’s studies data to determine the negative impacts of social isolation, through the researches made on the astronauts which were isolated for extended periods in the NASA space station, which helped us come up with our solution of keeping social connection while distancing physically to prevent infection. We integrated NASA's open-source image gallery and online virtual tours into the application. We used Adobe XD to develop our project, flutter for IOS and Android will be used later.
The main challenge we faced was the difficulty of acquiring user-friendly data, as it wasn’t easy to get virtual tours that are appropriate. Our biggest achievement was that we built the UI/UX of the app.
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Social Isolation Impacts:
https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/social-isolation/in-context
https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/social-isolation
Visuals:
Moon:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_feature/public/thumbnails/image/nh-mp1_029918_destripe_large_bright.jpg
Galaxy:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-universe-956981/
Paintings:
https://artsandculture.google.com/search?q=360&hl=en
Virtual tours
Museums free Virtual tours:
https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/free-virtual-tours/
Marine Virtual DIVES:
https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/vr/