Team Eunoia - Space Apps Challenge

Team Eunoia| 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.

Eunoia: sharing equals healing

Summary

Our idea is to provide a global sharing platform for people during the crisis of COVID-19. People have been confined with no one to talk to and share their feelings; they may feel distressed and anxious. To combat this situation, we have created a demo website which will connect people throughout the world to counsellors. They can easily contact them through message, email or even call them. They can also express themselves through their artworks or blogs to get effective advice and solutions.

How We Addressed This Challenge

Our project works to solve one of the burning issues of the current situation. It addresses this challenge using a digital platform and abides by the rule of isolation. We ourselves developed this idea during self-quarantine. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the face to face interaction is limited and the people are unable to communicate. Even normal people who think they are perfectly alright have anxiety and stress during this time. So, our website is an excellent platform to share problems and get suggestions from the experts. It can vary from a big problem to a particular thing that is bothering them. We also have a blog and art section where people can add their creations and share with others.

How We Developed This Project

Since the astronauts have to spend quite a lot of time in Space which is far from home and the people, the environment is similar to the current condition. HRP(Human Resource Program) conducted by NASA has been investing in studies related to the individual resilience and methods to cope up with problems like loneliness, helplessness, and anxiety that affect all people separated from their families and friends. NASA developed a five-minute self-test where astronauts can objectively assess the effect of fatigue on performance. The Self Test is used to track the sleep loss and help the ground and flight crews recognize and compensate for the changes. NASA also adopted the idea of journal entries to help the astronauts and crew members cope up with the stress. While they are on orbit, they make journal entries at least three times a week which can be either in written form or audio recording. This study and observation also have an application on the earth as the results can help people to improve the behavioural and emotional performance of people living and working under different circumstances and condition. Mental distress and anxiety are also one of the major problems among people during this time. So, we used this as a source of inspiration to build a website where people can virtually connect with the counselor and talk to them. They can also share their write-ups, journals and even artworks.

We used google sites for making our website, NASA's and the World Health Organization's websites to access the data and ms excel to interpret the data. During this hackathon, we had to do a lot of research and data collection. But It was a bit difficult to get the data of NASA related to the mental health of the public. After working on this project, we learnt to work in a team, analyze the problems and finally develop a solution which can be executed in the real world. We learnt to extract data from different sites and work with them.