Hi Product Hunt! Founder of Joy here. I've been working on Joy for the past few months as a way to get people talking about their mental health and to help them become the best version of themselves. I started working on Joy after coming to the realization that we track our steps, heartbeat, calories burned and more each and every day. But why are we not also tracking our mental health? Today I'm launching a new project I've been working on called Joy that helps anyone do just that.
Joy checks in with you once a day and asks how your day was. Joy can detect if you're feeling stressed or unhappy and offer tips on how to de-stress or improve your happiness.
I wrote more about how Joy works and why I'm building it here: https://medium.com/@dannyfreed/h...
Happy to answer any questions about Joy, building bots, ai, mental health, etc!
@yaekyum Thanks Yaekyum! The main reason was for speed. No need to reinvent the wheel. Building my own messaging platform means I need to invest the time + resources into the platform itself (UI, security, server architecture, etc.) along with building the actual emotional intelligence that Joy requires. Plus, everyone is already on Facebook Messenger and Slack, so it's just an uphill battle to convince them to download another app AND use Joy.
Great to see this! A bit of feedback, if you're game: I think the Q&A (especially the first time) might benefit from a human touch. After I responded in the affirmative to a symptom (nervousness), the bot chirped on to the next, more significant symptom in a very casual tone "How about hopeless?", which felt really off. If this were a questionnaire (like the BDI), it would be a different story--but it's by nature conversational. As the user becomes more vulnerable, it seems like the bot should acknowledge that vulnerability, otherwise the scales are out of balance. If you're looking to make it more personal, adding a table of responses specifically triggered by affirmative answers (especially to the clinically significant/more severe prompts, like worthlessness) might help users feel more comfortable. It seems like that personal tone exists later in the experience, so 💯!
It's strange to talk to a bot about how my day was bloody awful. But idea is good anyway. I got stuck after meditation video. What's next? Bot'll just ask me tomorrow about my mood? And how many tips does the bot have? I will need a lot :D
@ekaterina_kharitonova thanks for trying it out! I know it might feel strange, but it's better than not talking about it at all! And yes, right now that's all that is next. It's still pretty simple. There will be different tips depending on a variety of different factors. You can also view a report of your mood over time by saying REPORT.
Love the idea of this. Going to download this now and give it a try. I work in sales and it can sometimes be pretty stressful (surprise!) - especially now as I'm less than two weeks away from year end, and this could be a really useful tool to help identify a build up of stress in time to take proper action.
Really looking forward to trying it 😀
@steve_brigden1 Awesome -- interesting use case! I'm very curious to hear how this could help you in your workplace environment. Would you be comfortable sharing your mood with your employer? What if it was anonymous? Would love to hear your thoughts on this!
@dannyfreed I'll let you know after a few days! Personally I would be happy to share - forward thinking employers should be wanting to understand employee health. However, Facebook isn't the answer for that and you will need to align your bot to other 'enterprise-friendly' messaging services - Spark, Slack, etc.
Key point for me is adjustment for timezones. I'm in the UK and the bot asks me how my day was first thing in the morning a by which time I've had a good night sleep and have forgotten how my day was! Maybe an on-boarding question about location and adjust the time accordingly?
@stevebrigden Thanks Steve. Totally agree about Slack and the workplace.. For the location, you can set your timezone by saying "Settings." Typically, a user sets this in onboarding but looks like there was a little bug with the Product Hunt specific onboarding flow where it didn't ask for timezone! Thanks for pointing this out.
Love the idea, Danny. The bot looks really promising. Have you talk to psychologists and mental health professionals about this bot? They may have some useful insights.
I tried the bot feeling excited about the potential, but walked away feeling anxious -- Ironically for a bot named "joy" -- the first few questions made me think about nervousness, hopelessness, restlessness/fidgety and depression! Eeeeek! I stopped at that point. I'm not a mental health professional so I don't know if you HAVE to start with the depressing questions, or whether you can mix up positive emotions in there as well. Good luck!
Upvoted.
@amrit_sharma interesting. Great feedback. The onboarding questions are meant to be used as a baseline to measure your mental health over time. It uses a standard/proven method which I didn't come up with myself, but maybe I can tweak it to feel more fun/engaging. Thanks for your feedback
Report
I'm using Joy for a month now. Not daily but every other day. It's kind of nice to get the mood chart and have a little overview on what you did.
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