Hi James! Thanks for reading, and for your advocacy work. I’ve been reading your writings here for a while (particularly Ask Aunty Jimothy), so was excited to see your comment.

Jargon aside, we ultimately hope to support young people with their mental health and well-being through technology that we (Hopelab) design and develop. This sounds broad, because at the moment it is!

Starting in January, we’ll be focused on learning — traveling the country to chat with young queer people through LGBTQ Centers and other spaces to better understand their needs, challenges, and stories. At the same time, our researchers will be digging into the literature on queer mental health.

As part of this learning, we’ll also be prototyping a ‘queer’ version of the chatbot we launched last year (Vivibot) — tailoring the language and interactions to understand if young queer people (ages 15–25, mostly) would even bother using (or benefit from) a chatbot or SMS based tool.

If you’re up for it, I’m always happy to chat more. We (a small, queer and queer ally team with backgrounds in design, research, and technology) are curious to explore how tech can help support our communities, and the ways in which advocates like yourself are making a difference.