Initial Literature Review

I have been doing a lot of research in areas like Mental healthcare, quit smoking, pet adoption from the last week, but it’s so challenging to explore these areas in just a week. There are other areas that I want to explore but weren’t able to this time because of the assignments of other classes as well.

These are the areas that I want to explore in my Miro board:

1. Quit Smoking

I want to explore this option because I have a personal connection attached to it. There’s a back story involved with this topic. But leaving that, I think this area should be explored more.

Questions that come to my mind when I see people smoke:

When I think of work smoking, I wonder why do people smoke? What’s the taste of it? Why are there so many brands of this? Why people do when it’s harming their body or causing diseases? Why people share a different bond while smoking? I mean, if I smoke and there’s a stranger who is smoking beside me… We could be good friends in a couple of seconds!

When I asked these questions to my friends who smoke, they have one answer: “I feel RELAXED after smoking.”

So, ultimately this topic is related to MENTAL HEALTH. I researched the keywords like quit smoking, stop smoking, smoking, ways to stop smoking, and ways to quit smoking. I found mixed results, but the one which I found interesting were:

QuittyLink is inspired by the known value of personal face-to-face counseling as an effective means to help people quit, and provides individual counseling on mobile phones based on self- and system-tracked data about smoking habits. The application collects time, location, and situations that trigger the smokers to smoke or crave cigarettes and present it to them in simple charts/graphs. Users are also sent personal counseling messages written by experts from the quit helpline Stoplinien and is based on their smoking behaviors.

Why am I interested in this area?

I found this interesting because I liked how digital media like the mobile application can be used to stop this. I mean, most of the people have smartphones these days, an app for a good cause sounds good to me. I would want my friends to try out.

2. Depression/Mental Illness

Many children, old age, or even teenagers go through this phase in their life. According to the source, nearly one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness, and that’s just about the U.S.! Just think of the number of people facing this issue around the world.

While exploring this issue, an interesting thought came across my mind, How army veterans face this issue? I mean, I have seen various movies or TV Shows like “BODYGUARD” on Netflix, which shows that army veterans go through so much and even can’t get a job because of something they have faced in their past.

I found various links on the same, which they say helps in mental illness are: Talkspace and Project Hope.

Apart from these links, I found research that is a mobile application for the people who are facing depression. They used a human-centered development process with multiple design iterations and evaluations to develop an activity diary app for depression people.

Why am I interested in this area?

I want to explore this domain because my friends or people, especially in India, face a lot of pressure from different sources. Like children from parents due to exams or not getting into great schools or universities. It could be any person working in the office, unable to achieve the goals and is in pressure to save his/her job. And even if people want to get some help or like to share it with an expert in this regard, they can’t! Because of the pressure of society! What will society think of them? Are they mad? Because they are going to the mental doctor?

So, I think an app would be a better option where they don’t have to go to any doctor’s place or where children (as everyone these days have smartphones) doesn’t depend on their parents to take them to the doctor because they don’t have enough money that they can go by themselves.

Okay, that was serious! 😬

Talking about something cool, unexplored area -

3. Package Deliveries/Shipment

I am still exploring this one, but I think there should be a simplified version for package shipment and or delivery of items for the people. I mean, I know we have UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL, and so on. But still, the process is so complicated right now, at least for me!

During the research, I found one interesting article about Drone shipment and deliveries, which I found super cool! In the future, companies like Amazon and Uber are thinking of doing this thing and starting super soon!

P.S. If you any links that could be of my help in these domains, please let me know at taranpreet@newschool.edu!