Green Goose: Live Up To Your Best Intentions

Want to live up to be your best intentions?  Wish you hydrated yourself better?  Or that you were more consistent in taking your vitamins everyday?  Or that you made greener choices in terms of biking to work instead of driving?

Today, Brian Krejcarek of GreenGoose stopped in to Institute for the Future and a few of us got a chance to see the work he is doing in using sensors and a game-like online interface to nudge us into acting according to our good intentions.

The effort reminded me of the work of IfWeRantheWorld, which cheekily encourages people to “get off their good intentions.”

How will you program your world to live in accordance with your intentions in the next decade?

Green Goose, IfWeRanTheWorld and others are signals in line with our work on Mobile Health and the Future of Persuasion so we are intersted to see how Green Goose develops.

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Note:  Also posted on the IFTF blog, FutureNow.

 

Augmenting Your Connecting Behaviors

Ever wish for a personal assistant for optimally connecting with others?  Find yourself falling short of your best intentions?

Enter Thoughtful, a start-up that aims to augment your connecting behaviors:

Here is a quick & easy overview of Thoughtful from Mashable:

The premise is simple enough: Men need help buying gifts; Thoughtful connects to Facebook to surface local experiences and gift recommendations that match their mates’ tastes.

Thoughtful curates gifts sourced from local merchants who work with the startup to feature their products and experiences. Gifts start at $25 and include affordable spa options or much pricer fare: clothing, accessories, Valentine’s Day dinners and romantic weekend getaways.

The service will continue to keep track of important birthdays, anniversaries, and special events and will follow up with reminders to ensure the user’s gift-buying plans are prepared accordingly.

This begs the question of course, in augmenting ourselves and our connecting behaviors in this way, are we likely to become thoughtless human beings?

Maybe, but ultimately, I am guessing the Thoughtful team has great intentions to benefit human connectivity in authentic ways.  On their website, they are articulate the essence of the conundrum:

We feel, even on our ornery-est days, that most people are fundamentally good, and in fact, would like to be better. The simple fact is there’s just not enough time in the day for most of us to act on all of the great ideas that cross our minds, or even sometimes to do the really important things that remind the people around us that they matter to us. Our lives are full, work is consuming, and family routines become increasingly hectic and crazy.

As we build out the vision of Thoughtful, we hope to make it easier for people to act on their best impulses, and have some fun along the way.