We don’t actually know what we’re feeling most of the time.

But how could we? Society pushes us to move far too fast to ever sit with our thoughts long enough to acknowledge what we’re really feeling. It becomes virtually impossible to notice every subtle shift in our mood.

… And because we miss these shifts, everything just piles up quietly until suddenly you’re burnt out, anxious, and questioning your entire life path.

Just before Delta Hacks 10, I read the book: “Lantern of Lost Memories” by Sanaka Hiiragi. The characters spend their lives overlooking small, ordinary moments, only to realize those were the moments that, inevitably, shaped the person they were.

And that got me thinking…

How many emotions did I miss just because I was too busy in the moment?

While these emotions are only fleeting at first, it piles up and suddenly you’re 20, burnout, comparing your timeline to everyone around you (feeling so very behind), and spiraling even though… you’re also literally only 20!!!

2024 was rough...

It’s impossible to recognize every emotional shift we experience daily. So the question became:

How do we help people understand their emotional triggers without asking them to do more work?

Through user research, we found people generally:

1. don’t want to manually log moods
2. don’t recognize when their feelings change
3. and honestly… are too tired or busy to journal

We needed a way for emotional reflection to happen automatically, in the background of someone’s day.

Glimpse, see what you missed.

Glimpse visualizes your day as a timeline of emotions that shifts in color as your emotions shift. Each major emotional change generates a polaroid-style memory, capturing the exact moment.

01 — passive emotion tracking

The app runs in the background and lightly analyzes your expression. When your mood changes enough, Glimpse automatically captures:

1. a screenshot of whatever you were doing
2. a small snapshot of your face at that moment

Those two pieces become a tiny “memory” stored for later. This eliminates manual effort for our users, as there’s no burden for them to consistently input their emotions.

02 — turning moments into a timeline

Each captured moment shows up as a little polaroid along a color-coded timeline. The colors change based on your emotional state throughout the day.

Colors that dominate sections of your day are the background of the timeline.

James and I wanted to keep it easy for our users to notice any changes/patterns in behaviour visually with colour cues, but also wanted to keep it personable… kinda like a scrapbook!

03 — end-of-day reflection

At the end of the day, Glimpse gently asks you to reflect on each emotion, and each moment:

1. What happened?
2. Why did you feel that way?
3. How did your body react?

The goal wasn't to overnight identify these emotions but have them day by day acknowledge, hey these are the shift in emotions I have, and learn to be aware of potential triggers.

04 — tech stack

ReactJS, Firebase, Python, DeepFace — Check out our Devpost!

DeepFace detected emotional changes. Once the fluctuation passed a certain delta, we captured the moment → pushed it to Firebase → rendered it on the timeline.

While the backend was seemingly simple, a major (and vv challenging) question was deciding how much change was just enough to capture meaningful shifts while using our resources efficiently.

I think the hardest part actually wasn’t building but deciding what we wanted to make in the first place. (lesson learned: we’re both TOO picky).

But once we landed on the idea of emotional awareness + passive reflection, it felt right. :’)

If we had more time, I would’ve loved to explore adding some CBT-style insights or patterns over time.

our team :) james (left) and me (right) + our friends! ofc had to run da post clerb celebration RAHHHH