DePause
A campus mental health app that turns 5-second mood check-ins into a live, anonymous map of how the campus feels. Won 2nd place at TigerHacks 2026.
DePause (“Feel the campus pause”) is a mobile app built for DePauw University that reframes mental health as something collective rather than individual. I built it with Leo Tang over the 14-day TigerHacks 2026 hackathon, hosted by Women in Computer Science (WiCS) in collaboration with the Tenzer Technology Center, where it won 2nd place overall.
The problem: 57% of college students feel lonely, and 40% of those who need help don’t get it, most often because they don’t think they need it. The gap isn’t a lack of resources. It’s connection.
What DePause does:
- 5-second check-in: Tap one of four mood quadrants (Stressed, Good, Calm, Low). No journaling required, and cat memes are optional.
- Campus mood heatmap: Anonymous check-ins power a live map of how each of 21 DePauw buildings feels in real time.
- Evidence-based suggestions: A rules engine matches mood, context, and time to 2 to 3 personalized suggestions drawn from 80+ recommendations grounded in clinical meta-analyses, plus 100+ live campus events auto-refreshed from CampusLabs.
- On-device crisis detection: A 3-tier system reads local journaling patterns entirely on-device and gently surfaces help (988, Crisis Text Line, and DePauw Counseling) when patterns indicate need.
Privacy by design: Check-ins are anonymous by architecture, not just policy. A mood cannot be linked to a person. Building-level data only appears once 10+ students have checked in, and crisis detection never leaves the device without explicit consent.
Built with: React Native (Expo), TypeScript, and Supabase (Postgres + Auth + Row-Level Security).