Pplkpr: An app to manage your relationship
updated the 6 October 2015 à 23:21
If relationships tend to be overwhelming for you, then perhaps an app like Pplkpr may just help you to figure out who’s worth keeping in your life and who’s not.
We interact with many people over the course of our daily lives. Close relationships, friends, colleagues; some of them contribute to our well-being while others are detrimental to it. But sometimes, it can be hard to admit or even realise this by ourselves.
What if data and algorithms could understand our relationships and make better interpersonal decisions than we can ourselves? This is what the artists and programmers, Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald explored before setting up Pplkpr (pronounced ‘people keeper’); an iOS app that tracks, analyses, and auto-manages our relationships.
How does it work?
Paired with a smartwatch that transmits heart rate in real time and a GPS, tracking our location, the pplkpr app tracks and logs the variation of our heart rhythm.
When it detects heightened emotion, it asks us to provide information; for example, where we are, when and with whom.
Over time, an algorithm within the app can correlate the information. Thus, according to the variation of our biological metric, known as ‘heart rate variability’, the app deduces how good or bad the physical and emotional effects the person we interact with produce.
The goal of the app is to arrive at a breakdown of who among our relationships makes us feel happy, serene, anxious, irritated and so on.
It is then our responsibility to optimise and manage our social lives accordingly. But if we can’t do it by ourselves, the app can suggest scheduling time to hang out with people it determines make us feel good. Conversely, it can advise blocking or deleting friends it assesses as having a negative effect on us.
So if you’re trying to figure out how to divide up your precious time with the different people in your live, this app could just be the answer. It’ll encourage meetings with people who improve your well-being and to waste less time with those who don’t!
If you are interested, (watch the video here) the app is available for free to download.
Lindsay POUI-DI
