Man Up, Speak Up (Android Application): Final Technical Report

McEvoy, David (2017) Man Up, Speak Up (Android Application): Final Technical Report. Undergraduate thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

The primary objective of my application, “Man Up, Speak Up was to help Irish men start talking about their mental health and learn new ways to think differently. Through using my application, I hope Irish men will become more aware of their emotions and maybe notice a pattern to how they feel on a daily basis.

The technical solution I set out to build was an Android application developed in Java with Android Studio. While not available on the Google Play Store yet, I hope to have the application on the Play Store for the Showcase on the 24th May 2017.

On the 8th of May, I shared some details and screenshots of my application to my network on Facebook. I invited them to post suggestions on what they think they would need from an application like this on a daily basis. The response was significant, and I received two offers from trained psychotherapists to follow up with them if I wanted some professional guidance around the content of the application or its functionality moving forward. More details around this user research on Facebook can be found in the section User Research (6.5) below.

The application offers users a lot to help their mental health, but also could be used as vehicle to spread healthy awareness around mental health in Ireland for men. In the future, users will be able to promote their use of the application on Facebook through sharing an image to their friends. I hope that this promotion will chip away at a taboo that exists in Ireland around mental health for men and being able to talk.

In the future, I will be seeking the help of my own counsellor or a charity/organization to supply the content for my application. By doing this I will be using content that has been created or approved by qualified counsellors. For production and before the application is released on the Google Play Store, I have used placeholder content.

To give a brief overview of the application, when the application is launched, users are presented with an interface displaying 9 emotions. They are prompted to select an emotion. In the next phase of development, the user’s emotion will be changed in real time with the Firebase database. For production, this was manually committed.

This emotion decides what context based advice they receive in notifications or in their live feed that lives in the application. I hope that by using their live feed and receiving these notifications, it will awaken their senses to the emotions they feel, that will, hopefully lead to action. This action could be searching for a counsellor in their area through the on the “find a counsellor” tab. This Google Maps API integration will be part of the next phase of development.

Item Type:	Thesis (Undergraduate)
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > Electronic computers. Computer science T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Electronic computers. Computer science Q Science > QA Mathematics > Computer software T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Computer software Q Science > QA Mathematics > Computer software > Mobile Phone Applications T Technology > T Technology (General) > Information Technology > Computer software > Mobile Phone Applications
Divisions:	School of Computing > Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Computing
Depositing User:	Caoimhe Ní Mhaicín
Date Deposited:	27 Oct 2017 09:31
Last Modified:	27 Oct 2017 09:31
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/2663

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