Hold

This service invites people to act directly to improve the management of their thoughts and their lives. To do this, the core feature available is a small heuristic that mimics a conversation with someone else and in doing so, it insights learning and development. The fact that simply mimicking such an engrained format of communication has helped people engage with and understand complex thought, demonstrates an opportunity to explore co-opting other formats to enrich complex exchanges.

In addition to the opportunities for exploring the co-opting of interactions. This heuristic also tells a story of people’s increased understanding and acceptance of their logical inconsistencies in order to help themselves. Simply by mimicking a conversation, this device enables people to overcome stigma and think more clearly, even though they are knowingly participating in an illusion or role play.

This willingness to indulge in an illusion that they are having a conversation with someone else, is an acknowledgement on the part of the user of their own human irrationalities and an awareness of the factious or demanding nature of their thought processes and what conditions are required to unravel a complex personal issue.

This speaks of a humble, pastoral dynamic people have with themselves and a willingness to bring technology into that dynamic, demonstrating a high level of trust in technology. People are essentially saying, ‘I’m unable to think clearly and while I want to speak to someone else that’s not appropriate, however, I can overcome these problems by pretending to have a conversation.’

Is this a sign of an emerging shift in people’s attitudes toward themselves that maturely embraces some of the anomalous irrationalities in human behaviour in order to develop more control and ultimately be happier? Is this a collective increase in meta-cognition? Does it demonstrate a shift in people’s relationship with mental health, the role that technology can have within it and a willingness to game themselves?

There is a commonly discussed public concern about companies collecting data about us and the power they may wield as that data enables them to understand us and potentially control us. Yuval Noah Harari speaks of a need to learn and understand ourselves so we cannot be easily manipulated by technology. This dynamic equates to an arms race of knowledge about ourselves. Services such as Hold build both sides of that arms race, enriching the individual and the company with knowledge of the user. Can this growth continue symbiotically? Will us humans reach our capacity too quickly? Will technology always have more scope for growth? Would this be technology companies greatest trick in gaining control?

When asking people what they consider as a fair exchange for sharing data about themselves, they are ostensibly responding by saying that they want the same thing companies do —to understand themselves. Does this mean people do not understand the risks of data sharing or does it represent how much people crave knowledge of themselves?

Another interesting area of discussion that emerges from the service is about the relationship people form with the service as an entity. In this particular situation, the user mentally manifests another entity with whom they directly converse, but the app itself also has an identity. In this case, the identity is intended to manifest as a neutral, trustworthy, informed and non-judgemental presence that lends authority to the space and in turn helps the user respect their own process of reflection. In many emerging therapeutic services, the identity of the service is also the other entity with which a user interacts and converses with.

One of the challenges with designing the ‘Hold’ service was establishing the right positionality of the artificial ‘voice’ in the app (the instructive guide), so that it hosts the user in the space in the correct way allowing them to form the correct relationship with the activities conducted within it. There is a complexity in the interplay and overlapping of the brand of the service, the identity of any voices within it and the space. This complexity was carefully considered for our users, however, as we see more complex services emerge where some of the voices of the service are artificial, directly interacting with users and deeply engaged with a user in a long-term intimate exploration of themselves, there is not only an imperative to fastidiously curate that dynamic on a level not so far paralleled. But there is also a need to consider how these dynamics must be customised for each individual and how these relationships will influence people, perhaps years into a relationship.
Our service represents a willingness on the part of the user to engage with other entities of different, alien characteristics in an emotionally intimate and trusting dynamic. That trusting dynamic is fascinating, filled with potential, powerful and comes with a heavy responsibility