SheNicest Women's Hackathon: Projects such as the toilet-finding app TOILER and the cognitive observation tool Jianwei showcased

140 years ago, the world's first practical dishwasher was born.

It was invented by Josephine Cochrane, a woman who frequently had to wash precious porcelain at home. Turning life experience and everyday observation into inventions or patents—this is something women have been doing all along: windshield wipers, coffee filters, correction fluid... that's how they all came about.

Making up nearly half of the world's population, women's distinctive observational perspectives create products that benefit humanity.

These questions need not be so grand, and the technical tools need not be so "high-end," yet the products created are practical and refined.

In August, I observed a four-day hackathon where women made up 70% of participants—"SheNicest Fission."

On the first day, when I collected my entry badge, the staff member held up two lanyards, one with a pink cord and one with a black cord, and asked which one I wanted.

It turned out that wearing a pink-cord badge meant you were willing to appear in photos, while black meant the opposite. If I wore the black-cord badge, then when the event publicly released photos later, any photo with me in it would be deleted.

This was a small detail I had never encountered at other events before. The restroom arrangements also took female participants' needs into account, with a 1:2 ratio of men's to women's restrooms, making the women's restrooms relatively more plentiful.

An image of a middle-aged woman with short curly hair and a smile appeared on one project's display board.

Zoe, the project's initiator, told me this was her grandmother, Ms. Weiwei.

In recent years, Ms. Weiwei had begun forgetting words, repeating herself, and being unable to recall others' names. Zoe suspected Ms. Weiwei had Alzheimer's disease and wanted to take her for a cognitive examination, but Ms. Weiwei replied: "I'm fine! Stop worrying needlessly."

That phrase—"stop worrying needlessly"—became the starting point for the product "Jianwei." Zoe's team built a family cognitive health observation tool for adult children, which helps them keep an eye on their elders' health status without making the elders feel "pressure."

Upon opening Jianwei, users upload any recording of a conversation with an elder, and it will pay attention to issues such as pauses, repetition, difficulty finding words, and incoherent information in the conversation, generate the elder's personal cognitive baseline and long-term trend of change, and then, based on relevant medical knowledge, judge whether the elder shows any "abnormalities."

Ideally, Jianwei would only begin analysis after the elder consents, and the elder would not feel supervised or diagnosed. However, these are clearly two needs that are not easy to balance.

Getting parents to take their medication on time is also a major challenge.

Smart pillbox family-side basic interface

This product, which looks no different from an ordinary pillbox, aims to solve this problem. It is equipped with photoelectric sensors that can accurately tell whether family members have opened the box and taken their medication.

If parents forget to take their medication, the pillbox will play a voice recording pre-recorded by their children as a reminder.

What can we do for mothers? Mothers who are always taking care of everyone—what do they themselves need?

A mattress model shaped like a lotus leaf caught my attention.

The lead team, "Hemian," told me this is a smart mattress designed for mothers in late pregnancy, intended to provide physical support and turning assistance at night for expectant mothers with big bellies.

Hemian model demonstration

In the design drawings, the mattress curls up around the edges, with several movable hardware modules on top. At night, if pressure sensors detect that the mother wants to turn over, the mattress can proactively make gentle adjustments, providing appropriate support according to the sleeper's posture.

Existing smart mattresses on the market mostly assist turning by lifting one side of the sleeper's body, but pregnant women need to maintain stable intra-abdominal pressure and core stability and cannot withstand such movements.

"Hemian" instead uses an overall rotation approach: pregnant women sleeping on it feel as if they are sleeping in a cradle, with the lotus leaf beneath them swaying with their body.

There was also a mattress called "Turn for a Good Sleep," made for mothers experiencing menopausal hot flashes. Mothers wear wearable devices, and combined with sensors on the mattress that collect body temperature changes, the mattress can determine whether the user is about to feel hot and then automatically adjust the mattress temperature, so that mothers with hot flashes can get a good night's sleep.

"TOILER," an app for finding toilets, could be said to take one of the most common pain points in women's travel and consider it to the utmost.

It not only wants to help users find a toilet, but more importantly, it wants to help users find their ideal toilet.

TOILER basic interface

Upon opening TOILER, it asks: What do you care about most? It could be said that "TOILER" breaks toilet-finding down to the finest detail: whether there is a stall, whether the stall has a door, whether there is a hook behind the door, whether you can dry your hands. Users check off their requirements, and only toilets that fully meet them are ranked at the top.

That sounds very demanding, but Xiao Jian doesn't think so.

The creator, Xiao Jian, is someone who has "trouble with public toilets." In her own words, she may be a "gold-medal bladder holder": a toilet stall without a door, a toilet seat without disinfection facilities, no sink, and so on could all make her give up on using the toilet.

She doesn't want users to have to endure and avoid the risk of toilets not meeting expectations. Currently, some toilets in areas such as Phase II of the China National Convention Center, 798, Guomao, and Sanlitun have been included. Next, Xiao Jian hopes to continue improving the map system, find ways to make TOILER cover more areas, and achieve real-time, accurate updates.

Youyou, with short red hair, glasses, and overalls, always letting out hearty laughter, is a designer at a private company. I met her at the "SheFirst" booth.

"SheFirst" is an input method that places female-character pronouns at the front of its suggestion list.

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Today, with modern medicine advanced, common gynecological diseases still have a fairly high probability of not being promptly identified by medical services.

For example, polycystic ovary syndrome. The relevant data is that among patients with polycystic ovary syndrome, as many as 70% remain undiagnosed.

Chronic diseases often have an insidious onset, and at the same time, they have a long course, are protracted and difficult to cure, and require long-term treatment and management. After diagnosis, even more doctor-patient collaboration and long-term monitoring of the body are needed to bring the condition under more timely control.

Claire, a patient with polycystic ovary syndrome, has deep personal experience of this.

First, the name polycystic ovary syndrome implies excessive attention to patients' reproductive function, while many people overlook the long-term balance of the endocrine system, leading to delayed diagnosis. The good news is that in May this year, an international consensus study published in The Lancet proposed renaming polycystic ovary syndrome to polyendocrine metabolic ovary syndrome.

Second, detecting the progression of the disease depends on repeated physical examinations, which are time-consuming and labor-intensive. Even with test reports in hand, communicating with doctors is another challenge.

Thus "Pomi" was born. Claire and her team want to use the Pomi app to help patients collect and organize test reports, and to organize scattered disease-course data into structured medical reference summaries, serving as a "translator" between doctors and patients.

In the "Indicator Dashboard," changes in users' body indicators are clearly visible, while "Today's Medication" shows the medication situation. When the originally scheduled follow-up visit time arrives, the system reminds users to see a doctor and organizes recent medication, exercise, and test results into a one-page summary, hoping users will use it for doctor-patient communication.

"SheRhythm" is a mood-recording software.

Through users' continuous recording, it wants to help users see what they want to see—their own psychological state. When do you have more energy? What situations make you feel exhausted? How does today's state compare with the past?

Unlike ordinary software, it hopes to lower the threshold for users to record and capture users' fleeting moods that they themselves may not even have noticed.

Open SheRhythm, tap record, and just say a sentence casually, and SheRhythm will record it for you. Combined with data such as sleep, steps, and heart rate obtained from wearable devices like Apple Watch, after a period of time, your mood rhythm will be displayed, becoming your own exclusive mood map to help you better understand and care for yourself.

For example, a member of SheRhythm gave an example: sometimes your mood is unusually bad and you can't find the source of the bad mood—it may simply be because your period is coming soon. If you can know in advance when your mood will be bad, you can know what to prepare for yourself and what can make you feel better.

A lively little green radish is SheRhythm's mascot. The team hopes users will "pull out users' current emotions and states like pulling out a radish."

At the hackathon venue, there was another piece of hardware at SheRhythm's booth: an electronic badge, where the proportion of the green part on the screen represents the user's status battery level. The mood spokesperson has become more concrete—those whose status battery is visibly drained no longer need to explain in words that their HP bar is empty; while a full badge sends an invitation on the user's behalf: you can come talk to me.

By the latter half of the roadshow, I found that quite a few projects were not made only for women.

Some start from the body: "Ebb Tide" is an anonymous self-help mini-program made for people across the full spectrum of eating disorders;

"HerStride" factors menstrual cycles, body indicators, and emotional states into training plans. In its view, running is not about fighting the body, but about understanding and following the body;

"HerPitches" is a women's football information platform, where users no longer have to face the line "You're a girl, do you even understand football?"

The pink smart doll "YAYA" deals with safety on the way home. During the day it chats with users, and at night it can share location with emergency contacts. When a user says "I feel like someone is following me," it will help contact the emergency contact or place a simulated incoming call to buy the user time to get away. YAYA only lifts its alert after the user taps "Arrived Home Safely."

There is also a "roommate-version Dating App": first test your renting personality. Those who care about boundaries and prefer splitting bills are "AA-type people"; those who like doing activities with roommates are "human beagles"; those who cherish household items are "nest builders." Finding a roommate is no longer just about splitting rent—it's also about seeing whether you can eat, walk, and chat together, and turn a rented apartment into a real home.

Yougejia basic page

After touring the SheNicest roadshow, I had a contradictory feeling.

Health products like Jianwei inevitably face issues of scientific validity and compliance; Hemian made a mattress model, but that doesn't mean the 1:1 finished product can achieve the same; when more than four characters are entered, SheFirst cannot display the corresponding Chinese characters; "TOILER" currently includes only a few dozen toilets, which is not only a small number, but it also cannot update toilet conditions in real time.

However, I still thought of the dishwasher. This kind-hearted machine was born 140 years ago, and its mother was Josephine Cochrane, a person who often had to wash precious porcelain at home. The birth of the dishwasher followed this path: users needed it, users made it, the product appeared.

The contestants at the hackathon are trying to replicate this model, turning their own life experience into products anyone can use.

Although the current state of these projects cannot yet be called mature, who can help but look forward to one day using such tools?

Planning: Liu Chenyi, Liu Ziyan Editing: Liu Sijie, Zhang Wei Illustration and visuals: Qu Mei

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