A concept of the ciao bella app on a Melbourne tram.
A notification positive re-enforcement application. It uses the ASCII character BEL and hotwords.
Note: this isn’t possible without cutomised ‘hotwords’. I like the idea anyway.
We use dings! Humans have become used to the pleasent sound of a ding. We can use this to re-enforce learning. This is akin to ‘clickers’ for dogs. We aren’t much different from our furry friends. We both love treats, so please, try the cake.
I first observed this phenomenon on myself. I live near a Melbourne tram depot and they use bells for signalling. I hear a lot of bells. I noticed that when timed with an action it provides a positive effect. Ding!
We also, funnily enough, have a BEL character in the ASCII table. The BEL character rings a bell, suprise!
Thinking back to high school, I recall an experiment my teacher did on a classmate. They were told to walk around the room randomly. The aim was to find an object the teacher wanted. To do so, they threw them a chocolate every time they got closer to it. It, sadly for us, worked!
That is the premise.
Lets use a pleasent example. Say you’re tired from work or your spouse just won’t walk the dog. They exclaim, “oh I’m too tired to (keyphrase) “walk the dog”. Ding!
Oh, we say. That’s a dopamine hit.
Maybe it’s dinner and it’s getting close to 8 pm. You guessed it, ding!
Maybe I shouldn’t eat the chocolate. Ding!
This is a rough idea. We have the microphones, we have real-time surroundings, we just need the app and a few sample phrases to hit that BEL.
This has practical application for those suffering ADHD. Sometimes, we need a little external encouragement to move us in the right direction. I’m sure, given enough profiles we can find a lot of use cases where positive re-enforcement can be used.
Cake anyone?
Ciao bella!