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p/devas-push-talk-get-helpPanicking? Down? Get help from people you know and trust.
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Mike Heap

Devas: Push. Talk. Get Help. - Panicking? Down? Get help from people you know and trust.

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Devas provides you with one button, that's it.

Press it and we'll contact your 'guardians' - your chosen friends or family, people you know and trust and let them know you could do with someone to talk to when you are feeling down or panicking.

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Onur Kayabaşı
I couldn't understand why I wouldn't prefer "phone call" which is more comfortable and friendly way to share my problem with people I trust.
Zachary Blender
Maker
@onurkayabasi thanks Onur for the comment and checking out Devas! One of the benefits of pushing the help button is that it’s a super simple and frictionless for our users. During our interviews and from personal experience, we’ve found that when you’re feeling down, taking the effort to make a phone call or craft a text to explain what's going on and that you need help can be overwhelming and difficult, so instead we tend to isolate ourselves and stay quiet. By building the Devas help button we try to take the thinking out of it so that you don’t have to second guess yourself, you just need to push the big blue button. The most important thing is making it easy to reach out for help. Once you’ve initiated contact with your guardian, you can proceed with a phone call (if that’s your preference) and your guardians are already primed to listen and try to help you through whatever the tough time you may be having.
Haley Quinn
Many of the great people I know have depression, myself included. This is an amazing way for them to ask for help. Most of them are stubborn and don't want to bother others or make them feel down, so this gives them a way to talk about their feelings without having to reach out in the old fashioned way.
Mike Heap
Maker
@haleyquinn thanks Haley! Your experience and that of the people you know is unfortunately very common (https://www.instagram.com/p/CDs8... to see just how common!), and exactly the kinds of issues we want to address, but we don’t want to do it with a pure “tech” solution, it should be one that combines the best of tech with the best of humans!
Tommy Courtney
Big fan of this team - great job. I am sure you have thought about this, but one thing that pops in to my mind is how to educate the trusted contact to make sure they understand their role in the user experience, and providing them with the guidance and tools which allows them to help in the best way possible. A product like this is badly needed, and will become even more important over the coming years so super work!
Zachary Blender
Maker
@tommy_courtney1 thanks so much Tommy for your kind words and support! ❤️ I love your idea of providing more tools to educate our guardians! We are strongly considering this for a future iteration.
Mike Heap
Maker
I and several of my closest friends have suffered from depression for many years now and know that there isn't a magic fix for it but that it is something you have to constantly work on and be aware of. I also know that asking for help is one of the most difficult, but necessary things you can do in order to try and resolve your issues, but hiding your feelings can be so easy. I wanted to make it super easy for anyone to get help from their friends and family when they are feeling down, removing as many barriers to asking as possible, things like: - What do you say? - Who do you ask? - How can they help? Over the past year I've researched the issue deeply and built a small team of people who are as passionate as me about solving these problems. As a result, we've built Devas, the first step on our journey to making it so we can all get help at the point we need it, without having to ask. Devas provides you with one button, that's it. Press it and we will contact your guardians (the people you have chosen and trust) and let them know you could do with someone to talk to. We also give you a safe space to chat, if you want to use it. We want to get people talking about their problems, before they reach crisis point. This is very much the start of the journey for us, and we are committed to it, so we'd value any feedback and comments you have. Thanks!
Rahat Kubatbekov
Great job!
Elizabeth Downey
so far so good
Pete
I had this idea - glad to see someone made it!!
Zachary Blender
Maker
@petecodes that's awesome Pete!! Thanks for your support!
Mike Heap
Maker
Wow, thanks for the upvotes guys, this is really amazing! If you want to know any more about what we've got planned for Devas let us know, we've got big plans!
Zachary Blender
Maker
With our current MVP we have made the process of asking for help a little bit easier when you are feeling down and our next iteration will take that one step further… We know people will still have problems pressing the button in the first place, so what if there was no button? 🤔 What if Devas could predict when you needed someone to talk to, and reach out on your behalf, without you even having to ask? 😲 Getting you help at the point you need it, before things go too far. That’s our goal. 🎯🔥 There are so many things in our lives that can be indicators of when we might be feeling down – whether we have left the house recently, how we’re sleeping, whether we have been around other people, even how much we are using our phone. We will use these behaviors to create individual profiles for you, so we can identify ‘abnormal’ behavior before automatically reaching out to your guardians on your behalf, initiating that conversation for you so we can keep you on the right track. Obviously with all of this, privacy is of the utmost importance, and so we will ensure that: all data is ‘opt-in’ by default, we only take data that is absolutely necessary to improve our identification and assistance and conversations and we make all efforts to ensure data is encrypted and anonymised before we see it. If this sounds interesting to you, please get in touch, we’d love to share more!