For the last project of the first semester, the students at STEM Marin chose a topic on which they wanted to create a solution for. There were many different problems people resolved through these few weeks. Ideas varied from destroying the drought, colonizing Mars, and reducing car accidents. Here's what we came up with.
Better Your Angst
For this project I worked with Isabella, Jenna, and Rachel to help those with anxiety or depression through making an amateur website filled with information and references for those who want to receive help or get help for someone they know. We decided that anxiety disorders were and are a common hindrance for millions of people across the world. Anxiety has awful effects on you like panic, insomnia, shortness of breath, numbness, nausea, muscle tension, and more. It can prevent work from getting done and people from being happy. Anxiety and depression affect and take so many lives, thus making them unable to do things that so many of us think of as just normal, basic things.
Only about one third of the millions suffering from these ailments get help. Our website, Better Your Angst, is a quick, easy, and anonymous way to get help. People don’t want to have to pay to get advice for their troubles or constantly have to talk about it over and over again to a paid therapist. Some people don’t even want to admit that they are suffering. A website is a quick way to send your problems in and get feedback on how to solve them without paying a penny.
You can see our website here
Only about one third of the millions suffering from these ailments get help. Our website, Better Your Angst, is a quick, easy, and anonymous way to get help. People don’t want to have to pay to get advice for their troubles or constantly have to talk about it over and over again to a paid therapist. Some people don’t even want to admit that they are suffering. A website is a quick way to send your problems in and get feedback on how to solve them without paying a penny.
You can see our website here
The Engineering Design Cycle
Students worked on their creative engineering project by using the creative design cycle. The engineering design cycle is made up of 9 steps.
1. Identify the need
2. Reseach the Problem 3. Develop a solution 4. Select the most promising solution 5. Construct a prototype 6. Test and evaluate the prototype 7. Communicate the design 8. Redesign |
My group decided had a common concern for the state of people with anxiety and other mental disorders.
My group members and I spent several days reseaching and learning as much as we could about depression and anxiety. This research made us able to conjure up our result and solution. We learned many statistics that we found very concerning that you can see here on our Google doc that we eventually used as a script for our in class presentation. We spent much time trying to decide what would be the best way to solve our problem. Initially, we thought we would have a mobile app similar to our current website but more of a social network to connect and discuss with people suffering similar to you. We discarded that idea because we figured with a social networking background, we would lose our original intention and members of it would just focus on their follower count rather than building a community and helping others. We eventually settled on the idea of our current website, a basic website where people can send feedback that we can view and post as new articles to help others. We created our website with the free website builder imcreator.com. My intentions were to code a unique website, but since we didn't very much want to purchase our own domain we decided on a website building website. We spent much time viewing and introducing our website to ourselves and others and making edits to places we needed change. We sent publicity to our different social media sites and to our peers. We made changes accordingly to our website where we needed it. |
Our plans for the future for our website include getting the word out about it and eventually purchasing a domain. Perhaps we could get help from actual psychiatrists to help us with information and broaden the website. We've also talked about expanding the website to our an app somewhat like our first plan for the project solution.
Reflection
I enjoyed this project. I got to work with people who had similar ideas and feelings about a topic that we all wanted to discuss. I was proud of our final product and feel like we were well prepared for the deadline and the presentation.
Though the project was overall pleasant, I was disappointed that we ended up using a website builder for our website. I felt like we were relinquishing our dignity and admitting defeat by using it. Another difficulty we had is that towards the end of the project, school was cancelled for two days so we didn't have as much time as desired to work on it.
Though the project was overall pleasant, I was disappointed that we ended up using a website builder for our website. I felt like we were relinquishing our dignity and admitting defeat by using it. Another difficulty we had is that towards the end of the project, school was cancelled for two days so we didn't have as much time as desired to work on it.