Short Explanation

Based on our desk research and interviews, we found that people with a range of age 18 – 25 are very vulnerable to being affected by anxiety. This is because people around that age usually will enter several new environments such as entering the university world and starting to think about the future. Based on research conducted by the University of Indonesia, it is known that 95% of this age range has experienced symptoms of anxiety.

Anxiety is divided into mild anxiety, moderate anxiety, and panic-level anxiety. After going through the process of research and interviews with experts in the field of mental health, we agreed to focus our solution on sufferers who experience mild and moderate anxiety, because based on the data we found, mild and moderate levels of anxiety can still overcome the problem of their own anxiety condition with various methods recommended by psychologists before they should seek professional help.

From the interview process, we obtained data that five of the six users we interviewed said that this anxiety affected their personal lives, and said they were worried that this condition would have a negative impact in the long term. They also shared that they had never tried to deal with their anxiety at home, except by relaxing and chatting with friends. Therefore, it can be concluded that the sufferer of this anxiety symptom wants to pour out their heart so that the burden in their mind will be lifted. (page 8) Based on the results of interviews with users and experts, there are several methods to solve this problem, such as journaling and finding support groups. In conclusion, we want to help sufferers of anxiety symptoms to ease the burden of their mind by pouring out their hearts which has been proven to be effective in dealing with anxiety symptoms in the long term.

Project Goals

The app that we made is called “Avocalmdo”, which is a combination between avocado and calm. Why avocado? Because avocados are rich in stress-relieving B vitamins and heart-healthy fat that may lessen anxiety. The journaling app is mainly for young adults around 18 to 25 years old, to manage their anxiety by writing and sharing their daily lives in the form of a journal.

The main feature of the app is journaling. After the user enters the app, the first thing they’ll see is the avocado, and after entering their name, they’ll see a quote of the day and facts about anxiety. Before starting to write their journal, users can choose their emoji based on what they’re feeling and what activities they are doing for the day. They can also write down their activity for the day, how they feel, what blockers or stress they have, and how they overcome them. This app can also help users to deal with the emotions that they are feeling and also can be used as a tracker of their achievement history in overcoming these anxiety conditions.

Avocalmdo aims to help people with anxiety symptoms to lighten the burden in their minds by pouring their hearts out, which has been proven to be effective in dealing with anxiety problems in the long term. This app has several functionalities which are:

• Journaling their activity for the day.
• Journaling how they feel.
• Journaling what blockers or stress they have and how they overcome it.
• Journal log so users can see their history.

Framework & Dependencies

• UIKit Framework
• Apple Core Data
• Github with conventional commit versioning
• Github Action for CI/CD

Lesson Learned

I myself learned about everything that an IOS Developer should know. Besides me, our designer also learned everything that she should know about designing a user interface. And lastly, our tech guys also learned a lot about the fundamentals of swift and how to build an app from scratch.

What challenges did we encounter? How did we respond?

The challenge I face is this is my first time making an application on the Apple platform. I had trouble at first regarding how to make a layout using UIKit. To complete this challenge, I studied through Apple Developer documentation and sources on the internet, such as YouTube and because this project has a very short time of only about 1 month from research to the development phase, we have to reduce some features to pursue our main target which is to help people with anxiety symptoms to lighten the burden in their minds by pouring their hearts out.

Appreciation Section

Before closing this article, I would like to thank all members of the Avocalmdo team namely Radya, Farhan, Mikhael, Ilham, and Mega who have worked with me for 1 month to make Avocalmdo. I hope we can continue this collaboration to build Avocalmdo so that we can continue to help young adults around 18 to 25 years old, to manage their anxiety by writing and sharing their daily lives in the form of a journal which is Avocalmdo.