Grumble

Talk, Save the World

I wanted to make something that can let "People of Earth" to complain about their problems so that entrepreneurs and government can fix them quicker!"

On one hand, this could be a great way to let out the steam as research suggests that simply acknowledging and talking out one's worries is almost as effective as any other type of therapy. (Talking therapy - Sigmund Freud)

On the other hand, complaining is seen as a negative quality in people and is usually not encouraged on social media as it shows weakness and some might call it annoying...

Not at "Grumble".

For years, entrepreneurs thought that a complaint is an opportunity for innovation! So if there was a way to amplify complaints all over the world, estimate using machine learning severity of pains and geographically map them as heat maps - that could potentially:

Help create communities for people to bond and discuss local and global issues.
Enable social entrepreneurs to collaborate remotely while staying in contact with their direct 'customers'.
Help governmental and private institutions make more aware decision that are based on real voices. (city council meetings should just be left to 20th c.)

Grumble | Talk, Save the World

Inspiration

I started thinking about people who would benefit from my app. Entrepreneurs, government, large companies. They could use the data collected. This could be the revenue stream for the app, instead of the service running on money from ads, institutions would purchase access to the statistics and ability to interact with target users by creating centralized polls, give out prizes for contests and even just ask questions in comments.

My personal interest in the app was as an entrepreneur. I wanted to find my perfect cofounder who:

Cares about a specific problem as much as I do
Has skills and expertise that complement mine
Lives in the same area as I do (?)

But what I realized, in the light of the internet popularity, that my third point is absolutely not a must! And perhaps the sole reason I had so much trouble finding my perfect 'match' was that I was looking among very few people. Charles Darwin, was working on his 'Natural Selection of Species' early 19th century, meanwhile, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck simultaneously written 'Transmutation of Species' which was almost identical body of work. If both academics had a platform that could connect them over a topic they were researching their whole lives, maybe they could have quadrupled their impact.

While scientists finally found a way to collaborate and systematically organize large amount of ongoing research, entrepreneurs still have no better tool than Google, Facebook or Twitter to gather large trends. I started to think of a platform that could accelerate entrepreneurship by enabling the crowdsourcing of problem solving to happen online.

Art direction - Alex Kaminski

Design - Alex Kaminski

But what I realized, in the light of the internet popularity, that my third point is absolutely not a must! And perhaps the sole reason I had so much trouble finding my perfect 'match' was that I was looking among very few people. Charles Darwin, was working on his 'Natural Selection of Species' early 19th century, meanwhile, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck simultaneously written 'Transmutation of Species' which was almost identical body of work. If both academics had a platform that could connect them over a topic they were researching their whole lives, maybe they could have quadrupled their impact.

While scientists finally found a way to collaborate and systematically organize large amount of ongoing research, entrepreneurs still have no better tool than Google, Facebook or Twitter to gather large trends. I started to think of a platform that could accelerate entrepreneurship by enabling the crowdsourcing of problem solving to happen online.

I did some wireframing to understand the flow for each type of user and how they would interact with the app.

I wanted to create an engaging, fun and meaningful way of interacting with the world's problems. It was important to keep the app friendly and transparent.

Features I really wanted to have:

Let user upvote and downvote comments / posts
Explore the globe as a 3d model
Sort and filter by location / prevalence

Here is the final onboarding for the Grumble app:

Design - Vanya Prokopovich