App uses AI to stimulate users happiness

Austrian startup uses the latest research in mental health to encourage its users to record the everyday things that make them happy.

Austrian startup hiMoment, recently unveiled its new app featuring a digital happiness guru called hiMo. Users record the best moments and things in their everyday routines and share them with hiMo. The app creates collections of happy moments, and as the algorithm learns about each user, it is able to recommend motivating memories for specific situations. The app also provides mental workouts to help stimulate the users happiness by asking them to regularly choose between two of their happy items. This helps to strengthen the users’ awareness of the good things in life.

A digital version of a gratitude journal, hiMoment is distinct from social media accounts in that each user’s happiness feeds are completely private. The app does not gather content from other accounts and any material in a user’s stream must be directly uploaded to the app. “hiMoment works on the idea that if we change our perception, we change our lives. Happiness is very much an inside job,” says Christoph Schnedlitz, founder of hiMoment. The app is available for free for both iOS and Android, and the company is currently focusing on expanding after closing a round of pre-seed funding with four investors including Pioneers Ventures.

From health subscription packs to a smartphone game that guides young people through bereavement, wellbeing is an area of significant growth in innovation for both individuals and communities. What important digital connections could smart cities make to help improve their citizens’ overall mental wellbeing?