
Show HN: Helm - A Flutter app that gamifies stress/anxiety/depression management - chipneverdies
https://github.com/chuabingquan/helm
======
Funes-
We should be able to aid each other, in person, on learning how to manage
these ailments, which are frequently associated to a lack of social
fulfillment, as I've personally experienced on myself. Gamifying it is
literally the last option I would recommend to anyone suffering from anxiety,
stress or depression, as blindly following an app's dictates goes essentially
against the hard, introspective, and highly critical work one needs to put in
in order to start leaning towards being at peace with oneself.

I'm not even going to elaborate on how the "reward" function is plainly ill-
conceived, for intance.

Please, talk to those you love about their suffering; talk to them about
yours. Put yourself in the hands of a professional, if you need it. Stop
looking for crutches.

~~~
geoelectric
I have an anxiety disorder. Mine's co-morbid with ADHD, but even if it weren't
ADHD-like symptoms are well-known secondaries of anxiety and depression. For
people like me, gamification helps greatly with incentivizing participation
until a habit is built. I have no idea if this particular app would be what'd
do it for me, but you're down on the concept in general in a way that doesn't
represent my own situation well.

I do hear what you're saying, and nothing replaces social interaction, but I
think you're making an assumption about this being a be-all-end-all. Maybe it
would be for some, but those are probably the people who wouldn't adequately
find in-person on their own anyway. Maybe this gets them far enough to do so,
since just being functional enough to get help in the first place is often one
of the biggest problems.

On another note, everyone's different. It's one thing to say what works for
you, but your social fulfillment will likely be higher if you don't tell
everyone else what will and won't work for them.

------
trashface
As a person with anxiety and depression, its easy to come up with dep/anx
fueled narratives about how this could go wrong:

1) The app might stress me out and make it worse

2) I might become obsessed with the app and not do stuff I should be doing

3) My employer might get the data somehow and fire me

4) A future employer might get the data and use it as a reason to not hire me

5) Google might get the data and add it my shadow profile, which will then be
sold to advertisers. I won't even know and won't be able to delete it.

6) A health insurer will use this as a reason to deny me insurance or charge a
premium.

Those are just off the type of my head. Don't want to think about what my
brain would come up with at 3AM.

------
sli
I'm not a fan of the "Buy something nice" one. It seems like it might feed a
harmful coping mechanism.

~~~
suzakus
I suffer from several of the conditions listed in the target group, and have
done impulse purchases online when the lows get low.

Definitely a bad coping mechanism - not helpful for feeling better (tend to
feel worse when the product arrives), and definitely a waste of money.

------
gigatexal
SEO clash with the popular artifact packager or k8s helm

~~~
xvedejas
There's also an open source digital synthesizer named Helm

------
tom-thistime
This comment turns out to be a tangent. But has anyone looked at whether
gamification increases stress/anxiety/depression among social app users?

~~~
perchard
for:

[https://www.amazon.com/SuperBetter-Living-Gamefully-Jane-
McG...](https://www.amazon.com/SuperBetter-Living-Gamefully-Jane-
McGonigal/dp/0143109774)

[https://tim.blog/2015/07/28/jane-
mcgonigal/](https://tim.blog/2015/07/28/jane-mcgonigal/)

against:

[https://mental.jmir.org/2019/6/e13717/](https://mental.jmir.org/2019/6/e13717/)

~~~
blahblahblogger
Your "against" seems to be an actual study, your "for" links are from Jane
McGonigal who's been criticized for making claims not backed up in any way and
who makes money selling "betterness" through apps, TED talks, and books.

~~~
perchard
Thanks for your productive contribution to the discussion

------
cameronfraser
Nice idea, but I don't think gamification works in this context.
[https://mental.jmir.org/2019/6/e13717/](https://mental.jmir.org/2019/6/e13717/)

------
baylessj
I'm a simple man -- I see an open source Flutter app, I upvote it.

Thanks for publishing this, I always appreciate seeing examples of full-
fledged Flutter apps for reference! The app looks really well built and
intuitive to use.

~~~
rapnie
It is not technically open source, but 'source provided' until there is an OSS
license provided.

~~~
evv
True it may not technically be open source, but certain rights are granted
because the author published on GitHub, according to the ToS:

> If you set your pages and repositories to be viewed publicly, you grant each
> User of GitHub a nonexclusive, worldwide license to use, display, and
> perform Your Content through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your
> Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for
> example, through forking). You may grant further rights if you adopt a
> license. If you are uploading Content you did not create or own, you are
> responsible for ensuring that the Content you upload is licensed under terms
> that grant these permissions to other GitHub Users.

[https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-
terms-o...](https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-of-
service#d-user-generated-content)

~~~
TylerE
That doesn't grant any meaningful rights at all.

Notably, it doesn't given any right to download or use the code.

~~~
chalst
I think it does allow download, although it is a little unclear; from the
previous sentence:

> By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow
> others to view and "fork" your repositories (this means that others may make
> their own copies of Content from your repositories in repositories they
> control).

If I clone a Github repo to my local machine this is 'making my own copy in a
repository I control'. But this clause doesn't grant any further right, e.g.,
to compile code in the repo. This isn't an unheard-of situation: e.g., Knuth
allows distribution of the TeX source to the TeXbook but not compiling the
source with a TeX engine.

~~~
TylerE
It later clarifies with "through the GitHub Service and to reproduce Your
Content solely on GitHub as permitted through GitHub's functionality (for
example, through forking)."

That seems to deny any local rights.

------
asutekku
I don’t know, gamifying stress/anxiety management sounds extremely stressful.

~~~
airstrike
I can't wait to be ranked #1 most stressed in US servers

------
tomcam
Thanks for contributing a nice piece of work particularly appropriate for
tough times! I’ve been wanting to learn Dart and Flutter on a real-life but
manageable project.

------
kempbellt
Real question:

Who can accurately assess and answer the question: "How anxious are you?"?

Just reading this question triggers a bit of anxiety, as I go into self-
analysis mode to figure out what signs I've been exhibiting that may indicate
that I am "anxious".

"Well, I have been a bit jittery, so...7? But I just finished a coffee, so
maybe a 5?"

I would have a very difficult time answering this question accurately.

------
matchbok
Oof, I thought Flutter was supposed to make programmatic UI more
readable/easy?

    
    
        body: Stack(
              children: <Widget>[
                LayoutBuilder(
                  builder: (ctx, constraints) => Container(
                    width: double.infinity,
                    height: constraints.maxHeight - 67.0,
                    padding: const EdgeInsets.fromLTRB(20.0, 20.0, 20.0, 0.0),
                    child: Column(
                      mainAxisSize: MainAxisSize.min,
                      crossAxisAlignment: CrossAxisAlignment.start,
                      children: <Widget>[
                        Column(
                          mainAxisSize: MainAxis
                         ....

~~~
tarkin2
You can hide that in a smaller widget called SomethingWidget(param:...) to
make it more readable.

From my experience, using the above style with its data binding is nicer than
hunting through XML or whatever GUI you use and seeing how that relates to
your code.

Easier to navigate and debug. But I agree it can look overwhelming if it’s not
split into smaller widgets.

------
def8cefe
To get points users should be doing the self-care tasks that fall by the
wayside with depression. e.g. shower, brush teeth, laundry, cleaning your
home/apt/room/car, grocery shopping, etc. Social interaction also. Things like
watching online videos and playing mobile games isn't going to pull anyone out
of that hole.

------
solarkraft
Why don't you provide builds?

~~~
mdolon
Seconded, would love to send this to a friend to try out.

------
jujodi
Just guessing here - I'd think a lot of stress/anxiety/depression problems are
linked in some way to screen time and using an app to help with them is just
lonely and more depressing.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
How do you like flutter? What are your impressions of the platform.

~~~
_underfl0w_
Personally, I wasn't a big fan of having to disable the telemetry in the SDK
itself - thankfully there was a single, small footnote about it in the docs.
Not sure what I expected from the Goog honestly, but it was enough to put a
bad taste in my mouth. But hey, M$ does it too with the dotnet core SDK, so
maybe that's "par for the course" these days. YMMV.

~~~
blahblahblogger
Can you explain more? What does "having to disable the telemetry" mean and
what's the effect of that?

~~~
petemir
Telemetry is when companies measure and collect your usage of their product,
in theory so they can improve it, know which features are used and which not,
where users spend most time, etc.

As it is a kind of vague definition and you (almost) never know exactly what
information is being transmitted, and given the fact that it is Google (or
Microsoft, or Apple, or whatever), people sometimes rather just disable
telemetry at all.

------
gdsdfe
I would suggest renaming 'anxiety credits' to something else, reminding people
they have anxiety won't help getting rid of it.

------
mmerlin
99

------
jolmg
This project name is so overused.

Helm - The package manager for Kurbenetes

[https://helm.sh/](https://helm.sh/)

Helm - A functionally reactive game engine

[https://github.com/z0w0/helm](https://github.com/z0w0/helm)

Helm - Emacs incremental completion and selection narrowing framework

[https://emacs-helm.github.io/helm/](https://emacs-helm.github.io/helm/)

Helm - A free polyphonic synth with lots of modulation

[https://github.com/mtytel/helm](https://github.com/mtytel/helm)

~~~
ravenstine
Who's heard of those? Should a project have a monopoly on such a generic word
from the dictionary?

~~~
warent
That's not what they're saying at all. Imagine if there was a line of blenders
called Raspberry Pi, and a furniture line called Raspberry Pi, shoes branded
as Raspberry Pi, a laptop model called Raspberry Pi (unrelated to Raspberry Pi
or Raspberry Pi), etc. It's just confusing.

~~~
ukabwlsbeux
Raspberry Pi is a really unnatural combination of words. Helm is a pretty
average noun.

~~~
dang
This is a fine comment. But could you please stop creating accounts for every
few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site
guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users
need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no
usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

------
tomcam
No. The correct answer is “shit on its name” and not to encourage people to
share cool projects. You fool!

Ed. note: I also upvoted for the same reason

~~~
smoyer
I think the (currently top) comment about it's name is actually important ...
I also wondered why it was named "Helm" once I read the title as it didn't
seem to fit what the application does. But you're right in the sense a more
constructive activity would be to recommend other names. Wouldn't a name like
"Relax" or "Exhale" be better in line with "what's in the package"? (note that
these were the first two names that came to mind).

~~~
airstrike
I personally would prefer something like Burrito or Ossobuco

/s

~~~
kempbellt
I can see it now. The get-togethers where you ask your tech-illiterate friends
and family, "have you heard of Burrito?" and they all look at you funny. As
opposed to, "have you heard of Helm?", and only that one friend who worked on
a boat for a summer gets excited that he can add something to conversation.

Language needs an upgrade

~~~
smolder
I'd be happy with cherry picking out all the marketing/semi-literate pop
culture influences making a mess of it, but that's just as unlikely as any
kind of upgrade.

