Especially during these times, it’s too easy for us to feel as though our world is constricted, and our experiences unvarying—as if we are driving through a tunnel. In March, we created odyssee to escape that tunnel.
We started odyssee with a social challenge—50 people were asked to record their experiences, their activities, and feelings for 30 days.
Through a mobile app, participants were surveyed at varying frequencies: 4 times a day, 8 times a day, or 16 times a day. Each recorded moment was an opportunity to observe fleeting, or perhaps previously unnoticed, details.
A record composed of responses to the following 3 prompts:
- How are you feeling?
- In the last 10 min, what kind of activity were you doing?
- I was doing this activity because...
odyssee’s 1-month challenge took place in April 2020, an unprecedented time of self-isolation and reflection. Participants across the world were collectively experiencing reality in similar ways.
62% |
Reflect on and learn from my actions and feelings |
21% |
Stay mindful of what is happening at each moment |
12% |
Compare my experiences and learn from others |
5% |
Motivate myself |
Inflow activities lead to effects that are primarily internal to you.
Bi-directional activities, in addition to their internal effects, also produce a significant external effect.
Whether you participated in the 30-day challenge or stumbled upon odyssee, we hope that you learned something new from a month’s worth of evanescent details. By weaving everyone’s recorded experiences into aggregate visualizations, we hope to spark dialogue that connects us back to the wider world.
odyssee is a part of shiro’s
family of projects that encourage reflection
and vulnerability.
Drop a message —
We take privacy seriously, and will only use participant data for the creation of visualizations as well as their personal information to contact them if needed. We respect their trust and protect their privacy, and therefore will never sell or share this data with third parties.
