A look at the story behind Aloe.
Long hours and a high-stress work environment took a toll on Amber Discko, a Brooklyn-based digital strategist.
Discko spent most of summer and fall 2016 working on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Work consumed her life, and as a result, her own self-care took a nasty hit. To help her remember to take breaks from work to do things like drink water, take her vitamins, and brush her teeth, she looked to reminder accounts on Twitter.
After the election, she built Aloe, a customizable web check-in as a way to hold herself accountable. After Inauguration Day, she shared it with the world.
Discko takes a photo with a Hillary Clinton cardboard cutout during the 2016 campaign. Photo courtesy of Amber Discko.
Following some majorly positive feedback, Discko set out to turn Aloe into a full-blown iPhone app.
Hoping to crowdsource the $40,000 necessary to build and release the app, Discko launched a Kickstarter campaign on Aug. 1 (full disclosure: I backed the project with a small donation).
I’m building an app that helps you remember to drink, eat, and take a break from the internet. 🌱
— Amber 👩🏼🌾 (@amberdiscko) August 14, 2017
Back this app up: https://t.co/LhaoT5qeVI http://pic.twitter.com/5Nt1h3V9GD
OK, but who forgets to to do essential things like eating or taking medicine? A lot of people, actually.
Each year, millions of Americans forget to take prescribed medications. Even when the consequences are serious (possibly even life-threatening), these things happen. The same thing can go for other essential functions like brushing your teeth, showering, eating, drinking water, and more.
A lot of the imagery used on the Aloe site and in the app is garden-themed. This is meant to highlight the importance of tending to ourselves like we would a garden. Image from Aloe/Kickstarter.
So let's be real: we can all sometimes use a little reminder. Wearable fitness trackers send alerts informing users it's time to stand, and there's no shortage of time management and reminder apps scattered throughout the App Store. Aloe just takes that very familiar concept and gives it a fresh spin packaged with a bit of positivity.
One big difference between Aloe and similar reminder apps and alarms is the gentle approach it takes to its alerts. Rather than an in-your-face, shame-inducing alarm, Aloe simply encourages users to check in with themselves and their needs. While there, they can jot down some notes or do a little journaling right in the app.
The Aloe Twitter account offers occasional reminders to followers, and the app is essentially a customizable version of that.
🌱 Check-in: Have you remembered to take your pills this morning? Keeping up with our meds is crucial to our self care.
— Aloe 🌱 (@aloebud) August 23, 2017
"Self-care is about reflection," Discko says about Aloe's goal of making it easier for people to focus on themselves in a chaotic world.
For some people, self-care is synonymous with shirking your responsibilities. Discko hopes Aloe can help reassert and reclaim the true, very literal version of the term. "By putting something out there to redefine the word, we're making it normal for people to actually take care of themselves instead of feeling the guilt and the shame of not doing it," she says.
So yeah, maybe self-care, for some, is as simple as remembering to brush their teeth, take their medications, and eat. If it takes a little nudge from an upbeat little app to remember those things, that's what Aloe is here for.
If all goes according to plan and Discko reaches her Kickstarter goal, Aloe will be available in early 2018 on iOS and hopefully soon after on Android.
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