A website dedicated to help you through positive psychology
No matter the stage of life, positive psychology is beneficial to an individual. However, some people may not know the best ways to nurture their minds, and that is alright. For some, happiness comes naturally, while others may have to work towards it. Even for those it comes to naturally, they might need a few exercises and reminders along the way.
This is especially true for university students. For the ones just starting out, being away from home or being in an unfamiliar environment can be stressful. As they continue their journey through schooling, this stress may only increase, depending on how the individual deals with it. Instead of focusing on the positives of life, individuals may instead look at all the negatives, and then drown in the anxiety that comes with the negative aspects of life. With just a few mental exercises and proper knowledge, negative affect can be replaced with positive affect. What could people use in order to learn more and possibly do some exercises?
Pellio is the answer to that issue. It is a website where users can come to learn more about positive psychology and practice its applications via mini-experiments and keeping journals. Users will be able to make accounts via an easy-to-use signup process, and then their profile information would be stored in a database. Basic information such as name, email, gender, and birthday would be required. From a navbar at the top, the user can be taken to a list of mini-experiments and then partake in a variety of them designed by the Pellio team in order to enhance the user’s mental health. On this menu, it could show which experiments the user has or has not completed, and could view past results of the experiment. A user could also retake an experiment if desired. An introduction to the experiment would show up first, explaining the goal of the experiment and the science behind it. Then, depending on the experiment, an interactive window would be present in which the user fire events at the website and Pellio would interpret the action. These can range from one-time events such as writing a letter to a negative influence from one’s past and then “crumpling it up” via shaking the cursor, or Pellio can also offer longer experiments, such as if the user would like to keep track of three things that made them happy, every day for a week. After the experiment is complete, the user would be presented with post-experiment reflections, and an optional feedback portion where the user can state whether they liked the experiment or not, and why so the Pellio team can have feedback on how to make the experiment better. Users would be able to see themselves grow into a more positive mindset. Pellio would also have administrative accounts that are meant for developers. Members of the Pellio team would have these accounts, which would allow them to view ratings and comments left by users who have completed mini-experiments. From there, the developers would be able to fix any issues or technical bugs with the mini-experiments. Developers would also be able to push new features to the website, such as more mini-experiments.
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Mini-experiments dedicated to improving upon the user’s mental health.
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Having a user complete a Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) prior to and after watching a comedy.
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Achievements meant to keep bringing the user back based on how many events they complete or which events they complete.
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A daily log-in counter that encourages users to log in at least once a day.
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When the user logs in, the website can ask how the user is feeling using a faces scale, and again right before the user logs out.
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Graphs showing the user’s information to the users and the Pellio team, generated by the website.
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One graph can show historical data of how many mini-experiments one has completed over a period of time.
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Another graph can be generated based on the historical data of the faces scale (i.e., a user can see which days they felt the happiest or saddest before and after logging out).
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Continuous updates to add more experiments and overall maintenance of website.
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Registration and log in system
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Basic website framework that includes basic pages like: Index, About, Registration and Home Page
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An experiment where a user writes a letter to a negative influence in their life, describing how they made them feel at the time. Then, the user can click and hold their mouse on the area they wrote, shake it and it would crumple, and then throw it away or bury it in a hole via a nice, interactive animation. The post-experiment reflection would explain the meaning of the gestures.
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Gratitude journals that allow you to keep track of what makes you happy, with a possibility of adding more journals, such as a dream journal.
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HTML5 for the backbone of the website.
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Bootstrap for styling.
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SQL for server communication and database management.
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Javascript for animations and accessibility (eventually!)
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Django (Python Web Framework)
Instructions for command line package installation will be for Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install git
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-django
Run pyhton manage.py runserver in the /server/pellio/ directory to start the development server. The website will be available at http://localhost:8000.