I’ve mentioned the School of Life a couple of times on this blog.I am a particular fan of their YouTube channel which contains bite-sized chunks of wisdom on a diverse range of real world topics.
They recently released a mobile phone app (iOS only at the moment, Android coming), in an attempt to provide a greater sense of connection and interaction between users of their site.
The app is targeted towards the more introverted, deep thinking of us – people who find the social interactions of everyday life to be a little superficial.
I could try to describe the kind of person this app is targeted towards, but I think their 2 minute video does it best.
The set up process for the app is quite simple.
After downloading you will be invited to create an account and profile.
The account creation requires a name, email, password and date of birth.
The app then guides you through setting up a profile that includes:
- a photo
- your gender
- who you want to connect with (e.g. male, female, anyone)
- the types of topics that you want to talk about
- your favourite music, movies and books
- whether or not to share your location
- whether or not to send you notifications
Having set up a profile, you then have access to four main sections.
People
The people section suggests potential connections based on location and interests. Take note, this is not a dating app. The underlying idea is that these people share common interests and experiences and this will be a potential point of connection.
Opening any individual profile allows you to see the profile information they’ve provided, ‘like’ them and message them directly.
Ideas
The Ideas page draws content predominantly from the School of Life YouTube channel. You can watch their videos from within the app, and participate in conversations connected to each video. These conversations are separate to the comments that are left on the video on the YouTube page.
The Ideas page also contains a series of open conversations, based around thought provoking questions like “Would you, in general, prefer to punish or be punished?” and “What is your most endearing quality?”. Anyone can comment and thus far, I have found the answers provided by members to some of these curious questions be interesting and varied. You can also bookmark conversations to be updated when someone replies.
Inbox
Your Inbox contains your latest private messages and updates to conversations that you have bookmarked. Mine is currently empty 🙂
Profile
On the Profile page you can update the information you have provided about yourself, as well as access data on who you’ve liked, who has liked you, the conversations you’ve bookmarked, and events near you (these are events run by School of Life – which are currently only in Melbourne and Sydney).
This is also the page where you access the app settings, the ‘about us’ page and the School of Life shop, which sells all sorts of self-help, self-reflection, philosophical kinda stuff.
My thoughts on the app
It is well designed, clean and easy to use. I like the colour scheme and find the simplicity of it engaging. The conversations starters are my favourite. They invite you to reflect on topics that are relevant to everyday life, but also at a deeper level than the small talk we might engage in with those we encounter everyday.
I will be using this app a bit over the next few weeks and will give you an update. I welcome you to join up and have a try yourself.