The Internet might be the greatest tool ever given to know-it-alls.
From Facebook commenters ready to tell you how to raise your kids (and whether to vaccinate them) to Q&A websites such as Quora to message boards devoted to the most specific problems you can imagine, the faceless ocean of online dwellers is ready to step in and tell you how to live your life.
But is it good advice? What is good advice, anyway? And why can't online advice be more personalized, combining the best elements of crowdsourced knowledge with the kind of personal insight only your close friends can provide?
Those are just a few things being addressed by "Sooth," an app developed by Austin research psychologist Kate Niederhoffer. In 2013, she'd just given birth to twin boys and was in startup mode on a new firm, Knowable Research. As overwhelming as all that might be, Niederhoffer found her friends who were also dealing with turmoil in their own lives were seeking her advice.
"One was having a divorce, another was having a crisis and going into an international job," Niederhoffer said. "Everybody was using me as a sounding board because I was totally paralyzed breastfeeding twins."
Googling for solutions online and using Facebook friends and family wasn't satisfying their need for fulfilling life advice and seeking it in person wasn't working either, she said. And giving truthful, hard advice to others also had its pitfalls.
"A friend came to me and had the hard and tragic experience of giving advice to someone and it just ruining the friendship," Niederhoffer said. "I saw this mix of both desperation to give advice in an honest way and a desperation to get good advice."
With a background in social science and strategy she honed at companies including Nielsen Online and Dachis Group, Niederhoffer had the idea for a friendship-enhancement app. You'd pick out friends close enough to know your blind spots and exchange advice with them. But, she found, it required an amount of vulnerability and openness that people weren't ready to embrace.
"The feedback I got was, 'I want it to be totally anonymous,' " she said. But unlike already-existing anonymous services such as "Whisper," that are more like confessional echo chambers, Niederhoffer envisioned a place that would combine her original idea with a more open social network for people to seek and give advice.
Not to be confused with the app that helps people book massages, "Soothe," the "Sooth" app (as in "Soothsayer") has a calming, simple interface with muted colors and clear steps. Users can present a situation they want advice about in the categories Self, Work, Family, Romance or Friendship. A set of multiple choice answers can be offered as possible solutions; those giving advice can write a detailed explanation in addition to voting.
In keeping with Niederhoffer's original idea, those seeking advice can also use the app to email a set of friends, even people who aren't using the app. Responses from friends are anonymized: you might know that a response came from someone in the group, but not which person gave a particular piece of advice.
"I decided the app could have levers," Niederhoffer said. "Some people might want anonymous advice, some more self-realized or evolved people could do the original scenario. Some other people might want expert advice," she said, alluding to a feature she hopes to add in the future, most likely through sponsorships.
She boostrapped the app, which is available for iOS, eschewing any outside investment until, she says, she can build up a community of users and begin bringing data research insights back to that community.
It turns out that while there's a lot of research happening on the ways we communicate, there's a dearth of good research about online advice and how effective it is.
Based on insights she's gained from the community of "Sooth" users as well as a research project based on over 111,000 posts on a Reddit advice subgroup, Niederhoffer said she's started drawing conclusions on the kinds of advice people are seeking..
"They want advice that's concrete, long and doesn't use first-person pronouns," she said. "They don't want to hear about your experience, they want an action plan. They don't want fluff."
And overwhelmingly, at a rate of at least four to one, people would rather give advice than ask for it. "It's so much easier and more rewarding to give advice and give people a piece of our mind," Niederhoffer said. She hopes people who try the app will begin to ask others for advice after getting comfortable dispensing it themselves a few times.
In March, Niederhoffer spoke on a South by Southwest Interactive panel with "Two Guys On Your Head" radio co-host and University of Texas professor Art Markman. There, she presented some of her research findings, including the kinds of post topics that receive the most advice: family, housing and accidents, it turns out, get the most response.
Users who join the community via the "Sooth" app enter what's called the "Soothstream" where they can browse through dilemmas and vote or comment. One seeker says he's being treated differently at work after returning from paternity leave. Should he take on a new client that will involve late nights and several days of travel? Or refuse the assignment?
Another advice seeker hates her boyfriend's best friend. An advice giver suggests she avoid judging and make the best of the situation: "Not a deal breaker unless you let it become one," the anonymous "Soother" writes.
Users can vote up a particular piece of advice and everyone who uses the app can see past piece of advice they've given or received.
In testing the app, Niederhoffer has enlisted psychology graduate students from around the world to help offer advice within the app, ensuring that those who want help aren't left without a response. She's also sought advice herself, including a situation in which she had to choose between working with a close friend or accepting a funding opportunity.
"It turned into a moral dilemma," she said, "I used it to ask colleagues whose opinions I trust." She received eight responses that helped her make a decision.
The app, she promises, is not about depressed people seeking advice for their bad situations. Sometimes, Niederhoffer said, it's about choosing between two great options or simply confirming what you might already know in your gut. And "Sooth" is meant to help people realize that we are all often terrible at predicting our own future behavior, emotions and what will actually make us happy.
"It's doing research on yourself," Niederhoffer said. "You want to be a better version of yourself or make a better decision. You want people to give you a perspective that you physically don't have the ability to see.
"I want every single person who comes through the app to get a powerful experience."
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