How it began...
Koko started about seven years ago, while I was a graduate student at MIT. When I first got to MIT, I was completely out of my element. I had a background in psychology and social science, but I had never taken an engineering course and I’d never written any code. But I had a burning passion to build things. And I was convinced that technology, if designed well, could be used to help people flourish. I suppose that passion came across in my application and I was somehow accepted into a master’s program (despite my utter lack of qualifications).
Unlike me, my classmates were all technical wizards. They were the type of people who could read binary code and build entire computers from scratch. I tried to catch up, but I couldn’t. I dropped most of my classes my first semester because I had no idea what anyone was talking about. I went to a few undergraduate courses, just to get some foundations in place, but, embarrassingly, these were also way over my head.
My office was to the left of this picture. Robots would occasionally bump into my door while I was working.
One of my officemates at MIT, probably working on something insanely complicated.
One of my officemates at MIT, probably working on something insanely complicated.
I spent much of my first year convinced I was stupid and an idiot, with no business being at MIT. The depression that’s stalked me all my life came back with a vengeance during those years. Winston Churchill called his depression “the black dog” and I suppose I’ve had a similar beast plodding alongside me my whole life. But MIT made things so much worse.
At the same time, I developed debilitating migraines. These lasted for many hours, even days. All I could do was lie down in a dark room with an ice pack over my face. I lived in a world of chronic pain and dysphoria and eventually I had to take a leave of absence from MIT.
After a while, I found some meds that seemed to help and I came back to school. I resumed my studies and I practiced coding on my own, late into the night. I finally made some headway, thanks in large part to one website: Stack Overflow.
Thumbs up! I made it back to MIT, ready to finish my degree.
Thumbs up! I made it back to MIT, ready to finish my degree.
Stack is a place where you can describe any bug you’re having in your code, anything at all, and people will immediately come to your aid and offer incredibly elegant solutions — for free. I became obsessed with it. Who were these people who so generously donated their time and talent? Why were they participating? Who (or what) moderated everything? How did it work?
I started to wonder if a similar framework could be used to support mental health. I wondered if I could “crowdsource” therapy. If Stack could help me fix bugs in my code, perhaps something similar could help me address the bugs in my brain, so to speak. So, like any good MIT student, I quickly hacked something together and I tried it for myself. To start, I used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service and I paid random strangers a few cents to read my negative thoughts and reframe them for me. Many of the responses I got were terrible at first, but some were profound and really changed my view of myself and the world. It’s amazing how impactful a short message can be.
First manic sketch of Koko. Not particularly promising at first...
First manic sketch of Koko. Not particularly promising at first...
After building a few prototypes, I added a small feature, almost as an afterthought. I made it possible for people using the platform to give help as well as to get it. I didn’t expect people would actually help others for free, but I figured I might as well find out. My advisor (Rosalind Picard) encouraged me to lean into this feature and give it prominence in the app.