But anonymous apps like Yik Yak and Whisper command our attention, and what's different here is that people are given a chance to actively help those strangers.
It remains to be seen whether people will spend their precious time on a platform that could be seen as a repository of depressing anecdotes.
"We really want to make sure we're getting things right," he says. The challenge is to preserve the intended effect while borrowing from the interactive language of today's stickiest consumer apps. He's also refining the three-step response, working to ensure the feedback system will be effective at scale.
#DESIGN PANOPLY COUPON HOW TO#
For one, he's been thinking carefully about how to package the app-he doesn't want it to carry the stigmatized language of depression. Recently, Morris formed a startup called Koko to turn Panoply into a consumer app. Compared to a control group that did a generic expressive writing exercise, users who initially exhibited signs of depression showed significant improvements for depression and reappraisal skills after using the platform for three weeks. Morris' initial study on Panoply is being published this week in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
#DESIGN PANOPLY COUPON SOFTWARE#
As software goes, it's something of a novelty-a product that aims to enrich lives through precise, clinically-proven means, rather than merely assuming enrichment as a byproduct of its existence. Like other social networks, Panoply will take up that noble goal of connection, but in a more specific, structured way. After a study confirmed the site's effectiveness, Morris formed a company and is now working on turning the idea into a polished consumer app. The site, which was the focus of his doctoral thesis at MIT Media Lab, trained users to reframe and reassess negative thoughts, embedding an established technique called cognitive behavioral therapy in an engaging, unthreatening interface. Starting with the desired effect of helping people deal with depression, he developed Panoply, a crowdsourced website for improving mental health. Robert Morris is taking the opposite approach. We tend to build things first and worry about the effects they have on us later. When we uncritically accept connection as a good thing, we overlook difficult, important questions: Are some forms of virtual communication more nourishing than others? Might some in fact be harmful? Is it possible that Facebook, for instance, leaves some people feeling more lonely? No one knows for sure. Social networks aspire to connect people, which is a noble but naive goal.
0 kommentar(er)
