Today was the last day of Design Jam Depression Hackathon. My team (Love Submarine) rushed to finalize our product, Altrü, in the 8 hours that we had, and developed a presentation explaining our ideology and the benefits of the product.

Five other groups presented, and we were almost certain that one of them won. Our concept was most detailed but others’ product presentations were more complete.

So imagine our surprise when the judges said that Altrü was the winner of this year’s Design Jam.

Hint: we were pretty surprised and also super proud of ourselves.

I am so grateful for this experience. I have made friends with so many people and learned so much about designing a tangible, useful product formulated for user experience. I would love to take this project further and develop the app to help better the community and increase public knowledge on mental health.