Mobile apps, Informatics capstone

ListeningPal

Mobile apps for booking anonymous, half-hour calls with a trained peer listener.

When: 2022
Role: Frontend, backend, cloud, and some UI/UX design
Team: Emily Dooley, Madison Johnstone, Raiham Malik, and me
Built with: Flutter, Dart, AWS, Amazon Cognito, Stripe, Figma

Demo video Capstone page Project site

ListeningPal home screen listing upcoming calls by week — Upcoming calls

Scheduling screen with a February 2022 calendar and a time dropdown — Picking a time

Confirmation dialog: use one credit to book February 3rd, 3:30 to 4 PM — Booking with a credit

Pre-call dialog asking the user to agree to the terms and confirm they aren't in crisis — The check before joining

In-call screen for a call with Jane, with mute and speaker buttons — On a call

Resources screen listing crisis lines and national mental health organizations — Resources

Screens from our capstone showcase site.

The problem

ListeningPal is a Pacific Northwest startup offering mental health peer support: affordable, anonymous conversations with a trained listener. It isn't therapy; it's someone to talk to. For our UW Informatics capstone, ListeningPal sponsored four of us to build its apps.

What we built

A user app for booking 30-minute calls on a calendar, paid for with credits bought on the ListeningPal website.
Before every call, users accept the terms and confirm they aren't in crisis, with emergency resources one tap away.
Calls stay anonymous: listeners never see who they are talking to.
A listener app where trained listeners claim open appointments and join calls.
Reporting on both sides after a call, for technical problems or conduct.

My part

I built much of the Flutter frontend for both apps, pitched in on the UI and UX design, and set up the cloud side on AWS: the database, the backend, and sign-up and login with Amazon Cognito. At the end we handed the code, the AWS setup, and the Figma files to ListeningPal to finish testing and publish.

Emily Dooley led the UI and UX design, Madison Johnstone managed the project and its data science, and Raiham Malik built the frontend and backend with me.