Karen: The Life Coach in your Pocket
Blast Theory's interactive app, Karen, caught my eye the second I stumbled across it. A fictional, pre-recorded middle-aged woman named Karen serves as a life coach through your phone and transcends the boundary created by the screen to analyze the different aspects of your personality. Her questions are taken from psychological profiling questionnaires, and the software profiles you and gives you advice based off of your answers. At the end of the story, the app offers you a personalized report using the data it has collected through your many conversations with Karen.
The company that developed the application, Blast Theory, is a pioneering artist group that creates interactive art exploring social and political questions. Their various pieces of media center around the audience, oftentimes blurring boundaries between what is real and what is not. The company has been making artistic risks for years now; as early as 1998, for example, they developed the project Kidnap, which delved into themes of violence, pornography, and politics. They are also responsible for developing one of the first location games, named, Can You See Me Now? Here, up to 100 people could play online at a time, competing against members of Blast Theory on the streets. In 2004, the company also introduced I Like Frank, the world's first 3G mixed reality game.
Karen isn't Blast Theory's first shot at creating an interactive project with a mobile fictional character; in 2010, the company released Ivy4Evr, an interactive SMS drama commissioned by Channel 4 Education. Here, you would be in contact with a fictional teenager named Ivy through text messages. The more you talked to Ivy, the more she talked to you and revealed her problems and feelings.
You can read more about the Blast Theory's various projects here.
In the case of Karen, Blast Theory delves into the issue of how companies can use and analyze your personal data. The application was created in 2015, and big companies such as Facebook using personal data continues to be a problem even today. One of the most notable examples of this issue is the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the data firm by the same name gathered information on 50 million Facebook users to identify characteristics of American voters and influence their behavior.
Members from Blast Theory met with experts in the field of data collection and psychology to learn about various techniques that psychologists use to measure personalities. Then, researches sifted through hundreds of personality tests across decades, ultimately choosing the most fascinating and significant scales to interweave into the story of Karen. The project took about three years to develop, and several companies were involved in the making, including Blast Theory, National Theatre Wales, The Space, and University of Nottingham. Numerous people were members of the team, including three artists, one lead researcher, one assistant, one lead developer, one producer, two actors, one director of photography, one sound person, one editor, a large group of volunteers, and 539 Kickstarter backers. The Kickstarter campaign earned the team an additional $28,000 for development.
As someone who loves Buzzfeed quizzes that try to tell me my best trait based off the TV family I build (it's fun-loving) and every personality quiz on the world wide web (ENFP on Myers-Briggs, thanks for asking), I knew I had to meet Karen.
The Journey
Initially, Karen comes off a very friendly, but also slightly overbearing. I really do not know what I expected when I started the first episode on the app (the segments with Karen are called "episodes", and the app describes your interactions as "calls"), but it was definitely not a woman breathing heavily and taking up way too much head room on her initial camera shot.
On the first day, Karen gives me a quick talk about how she is excited to get to know me, and then asks me her one and only question of this session, which is how I'm feeling. One of the options is that I'm feeling a bit weird about the whole thing, which I am, so I choose that. For a half second, the screen becomes blurry as she processes my answer. Throughout the entire story, it always takes a couple seconds after I answer the question for the app to continue with a response. She tells me not to feel too weird, because after all, "How often do you get to open up to a 100% stranger?" I really wish there was a way for me to actually respond to some of her statements, because then I could tell her therapy exists in real life too, or that all our friends whom we open ourselves up to start out as "100% strangers," but I unfortunately do not have that option. The session ends, and a screen appears telling me the next episode will be available in about an hour and a half.
One and a half hours later...
At 13:05, I open the application, and Karen happily answers my "call." She sits on a desk with a pen and paper in front of her and looks at the camera in a slightly creepy way. She then asks me a few questions, and the application offers various ways of answering these questions depending on the content.
For example, when asked, "Which area is the most important for you right now?", I have three boxes to choose from:
I choose the first option. This choice is supposed to guide the rest of my journey with Karen, because I'm telling her it's the area I need coaching in.
Another type of question asked lets you pick your answer using a slider, which I found to be extremely helpful. The slider (which is a black line you unfortunately cannot see in the below image because I took the screenshot too early) is very fluid, and allows you to pinpoint exactly where you think you belong. I found this to be a lot more convenient than the sliders I often see in my beloved Buzzfeed quizzes, because those usually only have 6 actual set spots you can place the slider in within a certain range.
One of my biggest annoyances throughout my entire journey with Karen is how she asks me multiple-choice questions that should be open-ended. Of course, I understand that I am interacting with a piece of technology and not a human who could break down my detailed theories of life, but it is frustrating. For instance, at one point, Karen asks me how much I believe I had a happy childhood. Does "childhood" mean when I was an 8-year-old who was satisfied with a $15 Tamagotchi and a good book from the public library? Or should I be factoring in the awkward and terrifying adolescent years of figuring your identity and relationships with other people while also facing intense pressure to get all As and get into a top college?!
Within the first two days, she casually mentions something about her split with her husband. A small taste of what is to come; as the episodes progress, Karen reveals more and more about her life, to the point it would certainly be frowned upon if this were a real-life situation.
The beginning of the episodes also become more and more disturbing as time progresses, and I really question how the developers of the app came up with some of these scenes. Around day three, Karen picks up the "call" and refers to me as her "treasure," which is uncomfortable without even factoring in how close she is to the camera. She's in the middle of laughing very hard when this session starts, and then tells me she has to show me something funny. Spoiler alert: what she showed me was not funny.
Karen brings the phone down the hallway, and cracks open her bathroom door to reveal... a naked man on the toilet. Don't worry, you can't actually see anything explicit, but he is undoubtedly very naked. Karen then continues her habit of telling me information I don't particularly care about by telling me the naked man's name is Dave.
The next question: "Have I ever told you about my ecstasy days?" Okay, I'm interested. Karen already can seem a bit out of it with her regular mannerisms, so I'm very interested in hearing what she's like when she's actually on something. She tells me how she used to go clubbing with her ex, Charlie, all the time. She names some of the clubs - Fabric, Ministry of Sound, etc. This feels weird, because those are clubs my friends have all talked about before, and I know people who have been there. It makes Karen feel more real, not just like an actress in an app. She tells me how she used to drive under the influence. The app doesn't give me the option of responding to anything she says, which I'm grateful for, because I really do not know what I would say.
Another time, she asks me about the pleasures in life and goes on a rant that essentially implies monogamy is overrated. In her own words: "Sex with a stranger is more exciting, isn't it?" She says it like it's a rhetorical question, but unfortunately, it is not. The screen freezes and question and answer bubbles show up, restating the question she just asked.
As the days progress, the episodes become stranger and stranger, and the narrative seems to center more around Karen than me. By day 6 or 7, I open the app at the designated time to find Karen in her own world, not even acknowledging my presence. Once, the episode begins with Karen and Dave watching a movie together and then falling to the ground laughing. Karen screams,"No, stop it!" and clambers back onto the couch. She sees me, her eyes widen, she says "oh, shit," and the screen fades to black.
Curiously enough, while Karen seems to do a pretty bad job at being a life coach due to how much she unloads her emotions on to me, I can't help but grow fond of her. The day after the intrusive coach episode, Dave picks up my call and asks me if I want to see what's inside Karen's room. Do I? Yes. Should I? No.
Dave stands outside Karen's door and asks whether we should go in or not. I don't commit to the explicit "yes" answer, but I don't commit to the explicit "no" either. We enter Karen's room, and he starts rummaging through Karen's stuff, sneering, "Let's see what Karen is into." At this point, I do select the option to tell him to stop, because I'm angry for Karen. He keeps going, however. At one point, he starts asking invasive questions about Karen, whom he nicknames "K." I constantly select the option telling him to mind his own business, but he doesn't stop, ultimately cursing me out. I angrily respond the same, and the episode fades to black. Dave unexpectedly becomes a central character in my journey with Karen because he constantly clouds her judgement and reveals her self-destructive tendencies.
In the next episode, Karen's mannerisms and questions towards me are cold and judgmental. She tells me that Dave told her exactly what I did, and when I tell her Dave is a creep, she tells me she knows. I know Karen isn't real, but she makes herself so vulnerable and easy to read that it's easy to forget that sometimes. I feel angry for her and am genuinely invested in her virtual well-being, despite the fact I started playing this game - or however you want to label my time engaging with Karen - because I wanted to know about myself.
Eventually, Karen calms down and asks me how I think she is doing as a life coach. Honestly? Pretty bad. Karen completely blurs the line between professional life and personal life, and I feel like a life coach more than she does at times. She has offered me no concrete advice that I will actually use, and her life is such a mess that I would not even take her advice seriously to begin with. But I don't tell her this; I tell her she's doing alright, ironically telling myself that she's "just human."
The final call starts with a look at Karen's apartment - except this time, it's empty. Slowly, the camera tours the empty house, eventually making its final stop by the window. Outside, I see a small figure jogging. It's too tiny to actually tell, but I think it is Karen. A message pops up on the screen telling me my personalized report (which you do have to pay about $4 for) is ready.
The Report
The report is broken into two sections: Dimensions of Your Personality, and You and Karen.
In the section regarding the dimensions of my personality, the report states that I am "really open" to new and different experiences. The report also shares how it measured these traits in the application. In this situation, the two questions used to gauge my information were: "Having difficulty understanding abstract ideas" and "Having excellent ideas." According to the report, these factors were also related to my interest in Karen's personal life and my willingness to be involved in Karen and Dave's relationship. Of the 5,785 people who have answered so far on the scale, 82% of people scored high on openness.
Alright, this analysis about my personality is pretty true. I always do my best to be open to new things (with the exception being food), and I definitely was interested in knowing what was happening in Karen's life. The rest of the report, however, doesn't hit as hard as this part of the document does.
Apparently, the software is "unsure" about my propensity to be neurotic. The questions used to gauge this information were: "Would you describe yourself as relaxed most of the time?" and "Do you get stressed out easily?" It's hard to explain my response to stress because I thrive under pressure (pretty helpful considering I want to be a news producer). I'm also very energetic at times, so I would not call myself relaxed, but it also does not mean I'm constantly stressed - nor does it mean that me being stressed is a bad thing. Apparently 19% of the people who have used to app scored unsure on neuroticism. On one hand, I like the fact I'm complex enough that the software had trouble reading me, but I really would not say I'm at all inclined towards being neurotic.
The last part of my analysis in this section is just completely wrong. According to the document, I have an external local of control. Having an external locus of control means believing that events in life are due to uncontrollable factors such as "the environment, other people, or a higher power." The questions used to measure this trait were "It's up to me to make it happen, right?", and "Don't you agree that in the long run people get the respect they deserve?"
I even remember answering these questions, which came during the first half of my journey with Karen, and being annoyed with how simple they made such a complex question. I am a firm believer that we need to take control in our lives and make the most of what we have, but I would be naive to ignore the place privilege plays in society today. For example, while I worked hard to get into a good school, Olivia Jade got into an excellent college because her parents paid $500,000. Does this directly diminish my own hard work? No, but it also reveals that people who may not work as hard can climb up the ranks because of their privilege. I can firmly believe that we need to make the most out of our lives while also understanding that this means different things for different people depending on external circumstances, but the app does not seem to acknowledge that.
The second section of the report is about me and Karen. I really did enjoy my episodes with Karen, and loved seeing the confusion on my friends' faces when I would bring up her crazy life. She was definitely a mess, but that's what made her feel human.
The first part of this section analyzes what is really important to me in my life right now. I chose to work on having more control in my life, which was the same response 40% of users had. 14% had said they wanted to work on their life goals, and 26% wanted to work on how they approached relationships.
The next part of the report tells me I'm materialistic, and this observation is taken from when I had to choose between a bangle, a camera, and a deer family figurine. I had chosen the bangle, which 13% of users also did. In the exact words of the report, a user selecting the bangle means: "This person may be flashy and somewhat loud and may like to show everything to everyone. Not a very good listener, as the world is all about them and their boldness to stand out." I will admit I can be extremely loud and want to stand out, but the rest of that statement is not really true. It probably would have made more sense for me to choose the camera (I'm literally a Television-Radio-Film major), but for whatever reason, my mindset when choosing the bangle was, "I already have a camera." In hindsight, this definitely was not the logic I should have been using when picking my item.
The final part of the report measures my respect for privacy. The software says I showed respect for Karen's privacy, which is nice. If I'm honest, though, I could have been more aggressive from the beginning when Dave asked me if I wanted to see what was inside Karen's room. I never explicitly told him to go in, but I never explicitly told him to stop until he asked me the third time.
Of the people measured on the scale for respect, 54% did not respect Karen's privacy, and 30% had moderate respect. This trait was measured by three questions Dave directly asked when going inside the room and once inside it.
Reception
Soon after the release of the project, Karen surpassed its 3,000 download goal and quickly passed 10,000 for iOS. In the first week alone, almost 5,000 people downloaded the app. At the time, 35% of those who downloaded the application completed all nine days of the journey. 37% of those bought the personalized data report. These statistics, though outdated, illustrate how a decent amount of people were interested in committing time and money to artistic experiences on a mobile device.
At the end of the journey, users are also encouraged to share their experiences on social media using the hashtag Karenismylifecoach. While most of the "top" hashtags currently come from 2015, when the app was released, people have continued to play - and enjoy it - in recent years.
Press coverage regarding the app muses over what message the app is sending about data and privacy. A New York Times article brings up the question Karen begs you to ask: Where do we draw the line between our devices and ourselves? Karen plays the temporary role of a buddy we can keep in our pocket all the time, but we already have a permanent version of that through our mobile phones. If Karen is ever able to gauge so much personal information about people in such little time, what does it mean about our mobile phones and other platforms we share a lot of our data with on a regular basis?
One review by Adweek echoes my sentiment that the personalized report at the end is lacking. The author notes that it is "the most disappointing portion of the app," which I agree with. Ten days built up forging a semi-relationship with a mobile fictional character who asks you personal questions about yourself, only to conclude with a report that barely nails anything right? Then again, my experience only speaks for myself, and as Brandy Shaul says in the Adweek article, "I'm no psychologist."
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