Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

The idea behind Kindspace is that it makes wellbeing support accessible and empowers people to better manage their own self-care, whilst also bringing warmth and kindness into your day.

Kindspace has been a huge part of my life for the last two years.  Over that time, it has gone through many iterations and the content has evolved. 

My job is to curate all the wonderful wellbeing advice that is out there and distil it into little sound bites that you can then action or share with a loved one.  Much of the information in our library of wellbeing tips has come from the people that I meet and our lovely Kindspace community.

In this blog I’m going to talk a bit about how we came up with the structure for the Kindspace database, what each of the tip categories mean and how Kindspace can help you.

The Library

The wellbeing information within Kindspace is structured to make it easier for you to find what you are looking for.  In order to create the Alexa conversation, the data needs to have defined inputs (i.e. what you can say to Alexa) that you can then use to programme how Alexa should respond.  So whilst we would love for you to be able to ask Kindspace for anything wellbeing that you are interested in, at the moment this isn’t possible.

Our first step was to understand the wellbeing landscape, what are all the different areas and what frameworks already existed to help monitor wellbeing levels.

We started to collect wellbeing ideas from people, we asked them things like what wellbeing related activities they enjoyed, what things did they do to make themselves feel better and how did they know when their wellbeing was declining?

Based on this feedback and our research this allowed us to start mapping out the structure for Kindspace.  We used a keyword theme approach where each entry in the database was assigned words that described the content. Initially, this resulted in a large number of potential categories, for example we decided to combine diet, hydration, healthy eating into one category called Nutrition.  In a voice interaction a key aspect of the design is to try and reduce the number of choices that a person has, but to also make those choices really clear so that person knows what they need to say.

Today we have over 500 tips in the Kindspace database across 12 main categories, plus two additional for special seasonal content or content for specific days like the world and international days that we celebrate globally.

Sleep

Good quality sleep matters. It plays a vital role in both your mental and physical wellbeing, lowering the risk of long-term health issues and reducing stress.

Nutrition

Eating well by ensuring that you include a well-balanced range of foods in your diet can improve your overall health and the way you feel mentally.

Exercise

Physical exercise and being more active can make you feel better about yourself and less stressed.  It promotes better quality sleep and can help to manage your energy levels.

Mindfulness

By paying attention to the present moment, we can become more in tune with our thoughts and feelings.  Tools like meditation and breathing can help us to connect and feel less overwhelmed.

Relationship

Close, strong relationships where we feel supported and needed give us strength to overcome life’s challenges.  Nurturing these relationships can greatly improve our quality of life and our lifespan.

Personal Growth

Having the ability to grow and self-improve can help you to achieve true happiness and an inner peace with your life. Adopting a positive and grateful mindset can lead you to feel more fulfilled.

Health

Wellbeing is also about looking after your body almost like it was a machine.  Make sure you take the time to get regular check-ups for your body, including your hearing, teeth and eyes.

Complementary Therapy

As suggested by the name, complementary therapies can be used alongside conventional or mainstream medicine and often take a holistic approach, treating your whole body rather than just one part of it.

You-time

Making time to focus on your own needs and ensure that you are well rested is a key factor in our health and wellbeing.  Far from being indulgent, you-time allows you to recharge and feel better able to cope with life.

Financial

Financial wellbeing and mental health have a strong correlation, with money being a large contributor to feelings of stress, conflict and inadequacy.  Becoming more money confident can help you to live your life in abundance.

Inspirational Quotes

There is great wisdom in those who have gone before us and sharing their insights can lift us at just the right moment so that we feel a shared sense of purpose and belonging, particularly in our moments of struggle. 

Guided Affirmation

Our internal monologue is there to guide us, but did you know that you can actually change your thoughts through simple mantras to reframe your perspective on life?  Affirmations can help you to achieve your goals, by attracting the things you want. The Kindspace daily affirmations are now interactive so you get even more out of the experience!

Festive Season

December can feel like an overwhelming month. It’s easy to lose sight of what really matters. We’ll help you through with some practical tips to help you find calm in the chaos.

Specific Days

There are many days throughout the year where important causes with significant global impact are celebrated to increase awareness and support.

What’s Next?

What a lot of people don’t know is that you can use the commands at any point in the conversation when you are in Kindspace (or any other Alexa app, for that matter, as long as you know what the developer has set as the input words). You can think of this blog almost as a little cheat sheet of how to get to the content that you are interested in quickly.  So for example, after you open/launch the skill by saying “Alexa, open Kindspace”, you can skip the conversation and say “Alexa, sleep” and it’ll skip straight to a sleep tip. We have a new feature coming out soon that will make this even easier for you. It’s called “tasks” and is a little complicated initially to explain, so we’re preparing a tutorial to show you how it works. We’ve been lucky enough to be given early access to this by Amazon along with some other very exciting features.  Once we’ve finished testing the functionality and made a little video/help guide we’ll share with you how it works.

We’ve also introduced a personalised tips feature that recommends a tip based on your daily check-in results. We’d love to have some early adopters try out this new functionality for Alexa to give us feedback and help shape how this sounds, looks and feels. If you are interested, please get in touch at kindspace@tltechsmart.com.