Narrative Resonance

Part of

How we'll Care

An interactive self-reflective service powered by AI

MA 2023

Keywords

Self-Care, Self-Reflection, AI. Interactive, Narrative, Journal

Overview

Our project, Narrative Resonance, is a novel AI-based interactive service designed to promote self-understanding and self-care. The initiative aims to tackle the ongoing issue of people struggling to comprehend their true selves, which significantly impacts their interactions, relationships, and overall well-being.

Narrative Resonance is not just another AI that provides answers but one that inspires questions, perspectives, and deep introspection. It encourages users to reflect upon their feelings, thoughts, and life events by transforming these fragments into engaging stories. This process is designed to help individuals gain insights into their personality and emotional state, fostering a more profound and comprehensive understanding of their identity.

The unique aspect of Narrative Resonance is its approach to transforming scattered information, emotions, events, and thoughts into a meaningful narrative. Using an AI-powered chatbot, the service can provide personalised and anonymous interaction, creating an environment free from judgment, privacy concerns, and psychological barriers.

Collaboration

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BACKGROUND

As we navigate our lives, we often devote significant energy to understanding others and maintaining relationships. Yet, how often do we invest that same attention towards understanding the most fundamental person in our lives - ourselves?

This project is about ‘Self-understanding’ the concept that includes and is adjacent to self-reflection, awareness, self-care and discovery. This topic is important because 'How we view ourselves' drastically impacts how we interact with the world around us. And it forms the foundation for all other relationships. Moreover, self-love and respect set the standard for how we allow others to treat us, boosting our overall well-being and life satisfaction. It's about growing into our best selves and living our most authentic lives. We spend most of our time and effort to understand and build positive relationship with others. However, We don’t do the same for ourselves.

In order to understand people's situations in more detail, I conducted an hour-long in-depth interview with a total of 10 people and most people have difficulties understanding themselves, building and establishing positive relationships and interactions with themselves. Only one out of 10 people is shown to be forming a solid and positive self-relationship. This result is also proven by one of the most recognised studies in this domain. In a series of research with more than five thousand participants, the team found that 95% of people think they’re self-aware, but only 10-15% truly are.

PROBLEM

This situation is further accelerated due to the advancement of technology and the intensifying competition to occupy individual’s time and attention.

Open up my social media and I am a 100% guaranteed to get free non-stop entertainment. It is full of joy these days. The short and sweet content and interactions fill every gap in our life like fine sugar powder. We can never get bored. Our time passes without any gaps and it goes by too fast. There is no place for any discomfort to fit in. Of course, people know the issue and there are methods to overcome this. Journaling, meditation, counseling and so on.

However, according to our experience and the previous studies, those are not working effectively for most people. Think about how many times we frequently fail to do and repeat again activities like journaling or mindfulness regularly. According to my primary & secondary research, currently existing methods bring emotional or realistic burden. Basically, it feels like we have to do it super seriously and deeply. Feels like we have to secure very quite and private time and space and touch the deepest side of my true self or something.

According to the previous study, there is no correlation between the amount of time of self-reflection activities and the quality of self-understanding. Rather, it even makes it worse often. The study's team pointed out that a lot of people were doing it in a incorrect ways without the proper guide. For examples, if beginners keep asking about the 'Why' towards themselves and tried to be too deep, it would only cause feeling of depression and frustration.

As a result, most people are constantly trying to repeat the above process, or just ignore and turn away from the self-understanding and reflection journey.

In summary, the journey of self-understanding is vital for an individual's well-being. Nevertheless, many struggle with the psychological/realistic burden caused by the pressure to pursue it with profound seriousness.

Furthermore, misguided attempts lead to negative experiences, causing them to abandon the quest or stray from the path.

Theory of Change

IF, We can be a partner who helps people carry out the process of self-understanding and discovery in an easy, enjoyable, and correct way, anytime, anywhere,

THEN, We can enable people to sustainably cultivate a positive relationship with themselves and gain a deeper understanding of themselves,

IN ORDER TO, Empower people to achieve sustainable happiness and well-being, leading to a more subjective and fulfilling life.

SOLUTION

Here is a solution. Narrative Resonance, an interactive self-care service powered by AI

Not an AI that gives answers,

but an AI that gives questions, inspiration, and perspectives.

We aim to bring clarity to confused minds and thoughts by uncovering the narratives behind scattered thoughts and emotions. We are here to help our users go through the journey of discovering and understanding themselves in more enjoyable, casual and sustainable way. And that discovery is about who they are, where they’re going, and what they might become.

Basic Idea

The user's short notes about their scattered thoughts, feelings and life events evolve into engaging stories through AI and are read back to the user. Then, users can understand themselves better by looking into their thoughts, feelings, and situations from various perspectives in a diverse angles.

Narrative Resonance is an AI-powered interactive self-care service designed to assist individuals in their journey of self-understanding and discovery. It does not provide answers but offers questions, inspiration, and perspectives, helping to bring clarity to confused minds and thoughts. Users begin their experience with a personality test which not only intrigues users but also provides essential data to personalise their interaction with the AI. Following this, users are given a comprehensive analysis report which acts as a starting point for their self-understanding journey. From there, users link the service to their daily messengers or provide their mobile number. They then embark on a personalised, guided curriculum based on their test results and conversations with the AI chatbot. The curriculum could include increasing motivation and productivity or overcoming weaknesses, all tailored to the user's unique profile. Users are then presented with simple daily missions or guides, like introspective questions or prompts to reflect on their day. They then share their responses, which could be in the form of text, voice notes, or pictures.

The AI takes these scattered thoughts, feelings, and life events and transforms them into engaging narratives or short stories.

These stories offer acknowledgment of feelings, provide new perspectives, and suggest actionable plans or further questions for exploration. Feedback from users is encouraged to further refine and customise the generated content. Users have the ability to customise their setting, archive their generated content and feedback, and create their own narratives by connecting each fragmented story.

All these interactions are maintained with full confidentiality, offering users a judgement-free and private environment to express and understand themselves. The service is designed to be accessible, responsive, affordable, and personalised.

In essence, Narrative Resonance takes the traditional concept of journaling and meditation for self-reflection and repackages it into an engaging, AI-powered interactive journey of self-discovery. It transforms self-understanding into a casual, enjoyable, and sustainable process that can be integrated seamlessly into daily life.

People can feel free from judgement and concerns of their privacy, and can still feel heard while they interact with AI. Users will be able to take initiative in capturing positive, meaningful moments and thoughts in their daily lives more delicately and interpret them in a variety of ways. As a result, of course, the quality of experience that the service provides also increases.

We live in an age of algorithms. The algorithm may know more about us than we do.

The amount of knowledge we handle has increased significantly, but it is questionable whether it leads to wisdom.

It's a world where we ask the Internet and others literally everything. We even ask them what our life direction should be and what I should like. I believe that the most important thing in this era is not to miss the initiative of our thoughts, life, and happiness.

I dream of designing a service that can empower and enable people to take that initiative in their life and to achieve sustainable happiness and well-being without relying on unstable external factors that are beyond their control, leading to a more subjective and fulfilling life.

SPECIAL
THANKS

Team

Jaewoo Jang

jaewoo.jang@network.rca.ac.uk

Portfolio

Approved