Rootine: A Self-Care App - Proposal

 If you're like me, you have dozens of self-care applications on your phone. Such as Daylio, I Am Sober, Calm, Headspace, MindShift... they all offer different features. One tracks your mood, the other teaches Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) skills. But what if all of these features could be presented in a fun, interactive way? I present to you, an idea for a self-care app for Apple and Android: Rootine! 🪴

Rootine is a app with the goal of self-care and journaling your daily/current mood. This blog post will offer a brief overview of the app's intended features. Let us know in the comments if you'd like to see this become a reality! (Or suggest features we did not think to incorporate!) This app will be entirely free to use!

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🌱 Mood Boards & Uploads

Upon daily login, users will be offered the chance to make a mood board. This consists of nine photos they can either search for in the photos provided, or upload their own! Each "grid" for the photos can be chosen from one of six templates (users cannot create their own layout). Each mood board will be prompted with a theme, and users can use filters to acquire a certain colour palette of their choosing. This mood board will be saved on a "calendar-like" file, and they can choose to make the mood board public or private. Public mood boards will appear on their user profile.

Uploads consist of short text or lengthy paragraphs, and like stories, appear for twenty-four hours. This will appear on their user profile, directly under their profile picture/icon. Uploads will be deleted after twenty-four hours.

🌱 Snapshots & Time Capsules

Snapshots are essentially moments of time captured. These are positive moments captured by the user which will be stored in a Time Capsule to appear at the end of that month. A user can click the camera icon (or script to manually type out a memory) in the top of their screen, and "screenshot" a moment, quote, or the like to place into their sealed time capsule. Once the capsule is opened, users can revisit whenever they please. But they must wait for it to initially open on the last day of the given month. Time Capsules cannot be shared, their sole purpose is to remind the user of their progress and positive memories.

🌱 Biweekly Greenhouse Activities

Just like the Greenhouse Activities that run in the Discord Server, biweekly crafts will be posted biweekly, and given a two-week countdown to remind users of how much time they have to participate and when the next craft begins. They can upload photos of their craft to their user profile for their friends to view. 

🌱 Growing Digital Plants in a Personalized Greenhouse

Now, for the "game" aspect of Rootine. Of course, we HAD to incorporate in some kind of mindful, customizable feature. Create your very own greenhouse (with pre-designed content) to mix and match furniture, shelves, and aesthetics. Upon entry into the greenhouse, the user will be able to select their first plant. Upon every "level-up" (EXP gained by posting, simply being online, and engaging with the app), the user will be prompted to pick a new plant upon opening their greenhouse AFTER a level up. These plants need to be watered! (Though, they won't die if you forget about them, they simply won't grow and may wilt a little bit). Our alternate idea for acquiring new plants involve "maxing out" your first plant first. This means growing it as much as it'll grow before unlocking the next plant. There are thirty-five plants to collect, although your level can exceed this. 

🌱 Adopting a Your Favourite R4U Dinosaur to Care for

Not only can you grow plants, but you can adopt one of the dinosaurs from any of the waves of our characters to care for. Your little buddy will appear on your user profile, and can be found inside your greenhouse. You can interact with your adopted dino in many ways. Please recommend some ideas below!

🌱 Mood Tracking (With Statistics) and Journaling
Users will be prompted with a daily "questionnaire" to fill out, and then rank their mood. This tracks their habits, hours asleep, and overall well-being. At the end of each month, a simple graph will represent their self-reported mood. It'll showcase the ups, and downs, and the highlight of each day (if there is one!). This is a similar feature to the Time Capsule, in the sense it will only appear at the end of each month. Missed days will not be counted in the graph.

Digital journaling can be done with pre-uploaded PNG or JPEG images. Scroll through our library of graphics, or upload your own to make a scrapbook! Share your pages if you so wish (you can share some, and hide others) on your user profile.

🌱 Daily Mindful Pick-Me-Ups & Quotes

Users can ta[ on their adopted dinosaur inside their greenhouse once a day to prompt a thought-provoking, mindful quote. These quotes, if they resonate with the user, can be added to the Time Capsule.

🌱 Resources & Hotlines

Resources will be linked in a page under settings. These resources will have an extensive overview and phone numbers will be provided. This feature is still being debated.

🌱 Wholesome, Short & Sweet "Calm-ics" 

Comics featuring our dinosaur companions! Learn about their personalities and morals through these short, at most 4-6 panel "calm-ic."

🌱 Podcast

If given permission from speakers, we may upload our podcast sessions here, as well as the archive channel on the Discord Server!

🌱 Discord Server Overview & Join Link

Obviously, we run 90% of the community in the Discord Server, we will be including a join link and information about the server to encourage those with the app to join in on the events and socializing!

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So, what do you think? Should we add more? Less? Let us know! As always, we are all Rooting for You! 🌿