WallOfAnonymity

A web application that allows users to create posts (anonymously) and chat with anyone! The specific problem we aim to tackle is social isolation and mental well-being in this difficult time of COVID-19.

This web application is currently not deployed.

More detailed explanations about our web application can be found below.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js
• Any modern web browser (Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox etc.)

Installation (running on local host)

1. Clone this repository.

2. Navigate to the root directory of this project in terminal.

3. Run node multiServerExpress.js [portNumber] [&]

• The parameters surrounded by the square brackets [] are optional.
• If no portNumber is given, 3000 will be used as default.
• Use & to run the program in the background.

4. Open two different browsers and key localhost:[portNumber] in the address bar

• If no portNumber was used, key localhost:3000 instead.

5. To stop the server, simply press ctrl-C or cmd-C if the application is NOT running in the background. Else, use ps to get the process id(pid) of the server and use kill <pid> to stop the server from running in the background.

Built With

• HTML, CSS, Javascript, Bootstrap (frontend)
• Node.js, Socket.io, express (backend)

About Wall of Anonymity

During this time, people are very disconnected and the lack of face-to-face interactions makes it difficult to forge deep connections with people, thus people may feel very lonely and helpless. This is where Wall of Anonymity comes in, it's a place where people can freely spill their troubles or worries when they think that there's no one that they can speak or talk to.

They can also post something when they are in need of encouraging messages/advice/support by posting a note and the idea is that a kind stranger, perhaps with similar experiences, can leave some advice or just leave an encouraging note (unimplemented). Alternatively, people who are lonely and just want to have someone to talk to can use the chatbox to make conversations as a community. Having a place to throw emotional baggage is important because it helps an individual's mental health, so this is what our web application is made for! While this web app is not made for maintaining relationships, in a way it revolutionises making new relationships and friendships.

The traditional idea is that when you make new relationships, you would try to form deeper connections to strengthen that relationship by spending more time together, for example. However, with Wall of Anonymity, the idea is that people can form connections with many different other strangers without the pressure of having to make it work (i.e. no awkwardness) or having a real impact to their existing daily lives and circle (particularly for people who are adverse to change), there is comfort in the knowledge that no one knows you. Making deep connections can make one less lonely, but surface-level connections can do so too - what matters is relateability!

We think that our hack is relevant to both the Social and Education Problem Statements. While it seems that it's more related to social, this space can even be used (or be further developed) to provide a space where people can learn from one another about anything under the sun. For example, students who have problems related to their academic lives can post their questions up. Adults who are facing issues in their working life can post their issues and seek advice from others. Admittedly however, perhaps categorisation of post-its or creating new spaces specific for these target groups will be more helpful in terms of organisation (which is also one of our wishlist features).

Wishlist Features

Due to the constraint of time, there were several features that we had like to see implemented in our web application but was unable to:

1. The original idea is that kind strangers can come along to comment on a post to give advice/help/support, especially if they have similar experiences, or just simply leave an encouraging note. Perhaps a possible approach to implement this was to implement mini "chatboxes" on each post-it note similar to how we implemented the "Chat with Community" feature.

2. Another potential feature could have been a time limit for these post-its. For example, if someone simply wanted to rant anonymously (with no intention of obtaining specific help), the post-it can be taken down after 24 hours (inspired by the idea of Instagram Stories). Or if a person was genuinely seeking for help and advice for a period of time, perhaps they could set a time limit of how long the post will be up on the wall (or not set a time limit at all for it to be up forever).

3. One other thing we would have wanted to implement is the categorisation function for these post-it notes with the use of tags on these notes so that people can filter by the tags and categories if they are only interested in certain categories. This is also helpful for better organisation of data on our web application.

4. Not a feature, but something cool to explore would be the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyse the words that people use in their posts/chat to potentially identify if someone is high-risk (in terms of their mental well-being) so that someone can perhaps reach out to these people and provide support.

Authors

• Chua Yan Xin, Elicia
• Ngoh Wei Yue