About the project

Sonder.

It’s a word coined by John Koenig in the book Obscure Sorrow to describe the idea that every person around you has their own life as complex and fulfilling as your own, and yet that you know nothing about.

The person in the car next to you on the interstate. Your server. The person you catch eyes with walking down the sidewalk.

We are but just a web of interconnected stories if only for a moment, a dot – a brief pulse.  

And yet social media has defined our lives into just a single linear feed that we scroll.

And scroll.

And scroll.

What if social media didn’t push us content, it allowed us to explore and pull it toward us?

Where our stories weren’t defined by likes, and love, a laugh emojis, but just simple echoes of quiet, empathetic gestures of resonance. A place where algorithms aren’t used to sell us something, but help us learn more about the emotional state of the collective community around us and our emotional well being. A social network where posts didn’t just exist as text, but was visualized into art.

One night, I was hanging up a piece of abstract art my fiance and I had purchased when we first met. I had said to her, “I know there’s probably thousands of people with this print, but no one will have quite the same story for it as we do” and somewhere in my mind I began to feel inspired.

Meet Oura – https://www.ourasocial.com

Like traditional social media sites, Oura does include an activity feed of recent posts; however, they are chronological instead of based upon what an algorithm believes you want to see from friend’s posts. Additionally, users can explore a “constellation” of content, each represented by a pulsing light of emotion tied to an emotion of the user’s choice when posting. Echoing a post adds a small orbiting dot around the pulse within the constellation allowing user’s to explore content in a new way.

Do you want to explore the large pulse surrounded by bunches of echoes or check out the lonely blue pulse of sadness that’s gone unnoticed? That’s entirely up to you and the visualization allows you to really see what content is driving engagement without it being forced upon you.

Plus, every user has an emotional canvas that’s slowly brushed with each post – an abstract piece of art that’s uniquely theirs that evolves with time – like a colorful abstract painting of their life they can download or share that visually represents a certain point in time.

Lastly, instead of brands and advertising dominating the network, it’s kept active by way of premium features. By default, basic users are only able to post once per hour, ensuring a community of content that’s intentional, thought provoked, and methodical rather than rash; however, paid users can post immediately without any cooldown period, have a glowing orb around their avatar, and get AI insights into their posts to help them get a perspective on their life for reflection.