This project was the result of a collaboration with a team of life coaches to develop a series of prototypes as an alternative to quantified well-being apps. Instead of offering answers, we focused on asking the right questions—encouraging a more personal, reflective, and diverse approach to well-being.
Thanks to Experience Life, the U.S. health and fitness magazine, and Healthy Minds Canada, a charity in the mental health and addictions space, for their contribution.
September 2017
The Overall Issue: the Standardization of Well-being
“The game is true in that its algorithm is consistent, but this very consistency negates a world that is not.” – Mckenzie Wark, Gamer Theory, 2009
A reductive view of what well-being is prevails nowadays: one based on health, social, and economic indicators.
While these norms might be justified at the macro level, they can easily become prescriptive – and counterproductive – at the individual level. They can lead to:
- A lack of exposure to alternative lifestyles and life choices.
- The pursuit of ready-made solutions, and norms, to fix existential problems.
- A rapid loss of motivation and little opportunity to change one’s life for the better.
A Cause to Address: Life Gamification
Life gamification is based on the belief that the more we track our everyday activities (measure our sleep, track our food consumption, record our fitness exercises, etc.), the more we can measure our “progress” and improve our lives.
This is accentuated at the personal level by the lack of time to think, get out of the game, and be creative about our lifestyle; and at the social level by the lack of communication and mutual support for reinventing ourselves.
Life gamification is by nature playful and can help people achieve their goals. But we believe it only can, and should, do so when personal motivation has been worked out and is fully understood, which can require as much effort as the achievement of the goal itself.
How to Address It: “Open-Ended” Well-being Programs
Our recommendation is to disrupt the ideal of a standardized and quantified existence by reintroducing open-ended questions at the core of any well-being program.
We believe that programs that make cognitive therapy, open-ended discussions and reflections as appealing and accessible as their quantified-self counterparts should benefit from more investment.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence are technologies that could facilitate the introduction of cognitive therapy in self-help apps, and disrupt the widespread quantified-self paradigm.
New Habit and There for You Prototypes
To make our case, we have collaborated with a team of life coaches to develop a series of A.I. powered prototypes aiming at competing with quantified well-being applications: apps that are as satisfactory as mini-games but more meaningful, and conducive of change.
We have conducted extensive interviews and user tests both in the U.K. and North America to investigate to what extent the apps can be fun and simultaneously encourage personal reflection.
The best results were obtained with two prototypes relying on quotations and insightful questions: New Habit, a self-help app encouraging people to think creatively about their well-being, and There for You, a more socially oriented app encouraging mutual help and mindful conversations.
By focussing on asking the right questions and not providing any answers, the two apps promote a more personal and diverse approach to well-being: one that is opening up the horizon and empowering people to change their lives the way they see fit.
60% of New Habit users said that the app was helpful for them, leading us to believe that similar apps could have a positive impact on people’s well-being.
Our assessment is that A.I. technologies are not yet mature enough to provide meaningful feedback to users. Furthermore, consumer demand for instant well-being packages is high, which makes it harder to compete with apps based on that promise.
However, life coaching is a discipline that is growing rapidly. The current low percentage of people achieving their personal goals coupled with the high satisfaction rate of our prototype, and the progress of A.I. technology lead us to believe that similar solutions will eventually become serious competitors to quantified well-being applications.
Contributors
- Christophe Bruchansky, Plural’s founder, project lead.
- Amy Westin, Career & Life Coach, editor.
- Andra Popescu, Life & Business Strategist, editor.
- Lyralen Kaye, queer artist and activist, editor.
- Experience Life: U.S. health and fitness magazine, contributor.
- Healthy Minds Canada: Charity in the mental health and addictions space, launch partner.