DePause
A campus mental health app that turns 5-second mood check-ins into a live, anonymous map of how the campus feels — 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; cat memes 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 2–3 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).