M1W8 – Rapid Ideation 2 (Pt. 1)

Excuses & Drama

I come to RI2 very late in the day again. Reasons, but not really excuses, why, can be found in this post.

The Idea – Part 1

As with the previous RI session, the idea for what I am going to do has come to me very late in the day.

After the reveal, which was a “Hackathon” theme, I had an idea pretty much straight away, but after reviewing the material, it didn’t quite fit the criteria.

What I was going to do was write an Android/iOS app in Flutter ¹ for a health topic.

It was going to be a simple services finder. You open the app, and it displays where you are on a map. You are then able to choose which service you want (hospital, walk-in centre, dentist, optician, pharmacy, GP etc.) and it will display all services of that type within a 100 mile radius.

From there you would be able to tap a service, find out the information about that service, such as opening times, the website etc. and then be able to hit a “Navigate To” button which would open the main mapping app on the device to give you directions to that service.

So what didn’t fit? It doesn’t “Create an artefact that is geared towards solving a problem in fun and creative ways!“

As an aside though, I am now developing this app in my day job, to help our 100+ site workers who work all over the country.

The Idea – Part 2

Something very close to my heart is mental health, as I have suffered from, and still suffer from depression, social anxiety, and general anxiety.

Therefore I really wanted to do something that highlighted aspects of mental health. The idea for my artefact only came to me on the morning of Friday 19th March 2021, and it has been percolating all day, and I now have the rough outline of what I am going to do, and it is going to be based around mental health, specifically worded abuse/bullying either through spoken word or written and the detrimental physical effects it can have on you based on extracts from this Lancet report. ²

To illustrate this I am going to blatantly rip off an old classic: Pac-Man.

The idea is that the dots/pills that cover the maze will be little yellow smiley faces, with a few randomly changing to little red angry/sad faces as you play. Collecting the yellow dots will release a happy message on screen, like “Well Done”, “You’re Awesome” etc., whereas picking up a red one, either on purpose or by accident will see a negative message appear, such as “You’re Worthless” etc. and will actually slow the player down, so it is harder to escape. The 4 power pills are serotonin boosts and will restore the players speed to normal.

Not the best idea I’ve ever had, but let’s see if I can get it done before Wednesday night.

1. Flutter.dev. 2021. Flutter – Beautiful native apps in record time. [online] Available at: <https://flutter.dev/> [Accessed 20 March 2021].
2. Lereya, S.T., Copeland, W.E., Costello, E.J. and Wolke, D., 2015. Adult mental health consequences of peer bullying and maltreatment in childhood: two cohorts in two countries. The Lancet Psychiatry, 2(6), pp.524-531.