Find out who your real friends are with a new app that monitors and optimises your social life
Relationships are an emotional roller-coaster. So sometimes it’s hard to keep track of who your real friends are. Thankfully Pplkpr, developed by Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald, does the job for you with a series of cold, hard algorithms that put an end to tears or fights.
The iOS app, designed to be used with Mio Alpha and Mio Link wristbands, collects data about your stress levels using a heart-rate monitor, before calculating who raises your blood pressure, calms your nerves or even tickles your fancy.
Pplkpr then suggests or automatically takes actions, depending on how regularly you interact with someone. At worst it could block a negative influence from your contacts or poke a friend on Facebook. Day to day it might simply recommend people you should be seeing more of or open a text with a prewritten message.
In part the project is provocative. McCarthy and McDonald are both known for creating speculative art, like Social Turkers; a project that used Amazon’s mechanical workers to provide live feedback on a date night. Pplkpr’s aim is to question if we trust the decisions computer algorithms make over our own.

Eventually the app will be rolled out on other wristbands like Fitbit and Google Watch. But if you prefer not to have a heart monitor on your person 24-hours a day you can input the data manually.

It’s time to decide if we truly believe in our head or our heart.