https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1eJpCFexu8&t=72s Our product targets users who strive to be kinder, but fail to make tangible steps toward their resolution. By providing users with a physical trigger (a ring), a mine of ideas to help them incorporate kindness into everyday life, and a method of tracking/incentivizing habit formation, we help people stick to these resolutions and become their best, kindest selves. The kindness ring is a minimalist, red metal ring with the potential to become a fashion and cultural icon (similar to the duet pinky ring, which hollywood stars wear to express their support for women’s rights, with increased accessibility—more a symbol of character than of status). The ring is inexpensive and accessible for almost anyone to buy. Similar to the string that people tied around their fingers to remember to complete a task, this ring acts as a trigger— a reminder to be kinder. When people see this ring, they will remember their resolution and be more likely to act on it. The ring could also act as social reinforcement, expressing your goals and intentions to others. It could strengthen and even create new relationships, acting as a signal of good character and like-mindedness, as well as a conversation starter. The accompanying phone application provides users with a virtually endless supply of ideas for kind things to do. Francesca and I noticed how difficult it is to come up with a long list of random acts of kindness, and concluded that giving people this list would take away a barrier for action. Users swipe right if they’ve completed the kind act (or left to skip to the next), and each act is logged in their calendar—days are represented by black dots if no kind acts were completed, different shades of blue for one or two kind acts, and yellow for three. When users open the app, they can see their calendar, providing reinforcement and incentive to complete more of the app’s kind suggestions. When the year is up, users have the option of ordering prints of their calendar, an aesthetic and sentimental piece of graphic art that is unique and engenders a sense of accomplishment and memory. Within the app, users can click on dots to see which kind suggestions they completed each day. Not only does this system create fond memories through suggesting and reinforcing kind behavior, but it also serves a documentary purpose. This system has the goal of helping kind people master habit-formation and stick to their resolutions to incorporate random acts of kindness into their everyday life. It also has the potential of making kindness “cool” for an audience beyond those who would be initially interested—our goal is to not only make kindness a habit, but a style and a movement as well.
