Innovation & Technology

At Applaud, we’re tackling this challenge with innovation and technology based on fundamental principles of neurobiology, social cognition and emotional behavior.  We apply our patented process called Digital Collaborative Reminiscence with Personalized Memory Compilations that stimulates cognition, emotions and memory reconsolidation to influence how stories are formed, told and saved.  Our objective is to make sure the best stories, and the times, emotions and relationships they represent, get shared and saved easily and affordably, and in a way that helps people feel better about themselves and their group.

 

To share these benefits with the widest audience possible, we developed a digital collaboration platform called GroupStory™ which curates emotive content such as memories, images and stories from groups of people with a shared experience, like belonging to a family, team or company.

 

Sharing the most meaningful memories requires a way to encourage group recall then capture details and imagery from all the people in the group, regardless of how many or where they are--and that's just hard.  Even with technology, it’s difficult to capture the details of each team member’s memories, gather the right imagery, then combine them in a way that truly represents each person's experience. 

 

Groups are complicated and curating the most important parts requires skill and experience most people don't have. Moreover, a group’s story is more than just the sum of its parts. Groups experience, remember and share things differently from individuals. A group experience is the combination of all the participants’ experiences, each of which is a little different: what they saw and felt, who's important to them, what they said and did; it all changes how it's remembered and later retold. When a group tells a story, it has more than one perspective; each person's contribution adds something, fills in gaps, adds details.  Blending memories from different people’s perspectives makes the group story better.​

 

Yet, there's a downside.  Social objectives, like fitting in and not being embarrassed can influence which memories get shared and repeated. Those parts of the story then become dominant and can actually change what people remember and how they remember it.  This happens every day on social media where the loudest voices hijack storylines, and people whose stories don't fit "the narrative" don't share.  For better or for worse, how a group's story is told can change how people perceive and remember--how they feel about themselves and their group--forever.

 

Using software dramatically lowers the cost of access, reproduction and distribution and creates a GroupStory™ Personalized Memory Collection for each group member.  Even better, it doesn't treat people badly or have some of the negative outcomes of existing services; like social media.  Participants relive the best parts of their group experience in a truly personalized fashion with people they really care about and wind up remembering, feeling and loving better.