What Are We?
Heya! Meemo’s World is a safe space. It’s a place where people can practice gratitude and empathy for others, and learn more about how to improve their mental health.
We’re an NFT collection on the Ethereum blockchain with the big picture goal of improving the accessibility and efficacy of mental health solutions. We want to do this while utilising the power of our community to begin to break the stigma surrounding mental health, and to address the demographics of people who are not being recognised in Real Life.
For the past year, we’ve been building a gamified cognitive behavioural therapy application centred around creating a fun and sustainable way to take care of your mental health. Meemo’s World is how we want to convey this message in a space that we love~
The Origin
Meemo’s World was founded a few months ago, but the journey for us (Ono and Dr. Dekz) really began much earlier than that. In early 2021, bonding over banh mi, the two of us began to discuss our personal experiences with mental health, the challenges we’d faced and what we wish we had access to within the space. We had both, either personally or through close family and friends, experienced the consequences of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, and subsequently had also experienced the difficulty in finding accessible, motivating and fun solutions.
The app looked very different then, but we began to build, starting from grassroots by pressuring friends to do user interviews and iterate feedback with us. Now, we’re incorporated as a company, about ready to launch a usable MVP, have become finalists in one of Australia’s largest mental health innovation competitions, and are growing what we feel is one of the most genuine and nurturing communities in both the NFT and product development spaces. (We still have meetings over banh mi). We’re incredibly keen for this project to progress, and to be able to build something that can truly help people’s lives.
Our Vision
Our vision is ambitious. We’ve touched on this earlier — in the NFT space, we want to build the go-to community for people to access education and open discussion surrounding mental health. Alongside this, we want to build a mental health solution that is fun, sustainable and evidence-backed.
Of course, none of this will be possible without our community and users, and growth here is where our short term focus lies. We’re building an environment where everyone is on the same page in terms of practicing positivity, supporting others, being inclusive and feeling comfortable to express themselves and ask questions. As a mental health community, we’re also very aware of the sensitive nature of the space, and our team is making sure to stay on top of moderation and safety of our members.
Unlike many other projects, our application development has been underway for sometime. While a large proportion of mint revenue will be contributed towards product development costs, we feel that it is important not to depend on mint revenue when driving project progression. The community and our users should not bear the brunt of our project — we want to make sure that we also have skin in the game.
Building alongside community growth also allows us to validate our product, and quickly receive useful feedback to iterate our development. The validation and demand from our community is the most important metric of success for us. At the end of the day, building something is great but has no purpose unless it’s something that people need. We want to deliver value, and promise with delivery.
In the longer term, once we’ve finalised the gamification mechanics and received preliminary data around the efficacy of our completed app, we aim to run research trials. The underlying philosophy behind this is that too many mental health applications (thousands) are not validated scientifically, and this is ultimately a disservice to our users and the state of improving mental health solutions.
The App
We take on elements from our childhood games (think Pokemon, Neopets, Nintendogs) — alongside your mental health journey, you’ll have a companion that grows with you. We use cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), an evidence-based therapy¹, in combination with habit-forming behavioural science², to create a solution that is sustainable, and palatable.
The Lore
We’ve gotten many questions about what a Meemo is (a pickle? a sausage?). Meemos are creatures motivated by finding their inherent drive and purpose. Each grows a Maha, unique to each Meemo and an external representation of who they are internally. Think about all the life experiences that have shaped you into who are you are today — your likes, dislikes, personality, personal development. This is what each Maha represents, and as a Meemo gets closer to learning more about themselves and their ikigai, their Maha begins to grow.
Our story takes us on the journey of our protagonist, Meemo (yes, he is also called Meemo), and his path to self-discovery (definitely not a cliche trope). He faces constant feelings of inadequacy at the thought of not having yet grown his Maha, regularly comparing himself to the people around him who he feels are more accomplished and worthy.
As Meemo continues on his journey, he encounters his friends who each teach him a little bit more about himself:
- Sagi — how to overcome failure,
- Leni — how to find your passion, and
- Bufi — how to define success.
The story concludes with Meemo growing his Maha, analogous to him finally finding his true meaning in life — his ikigai.
What is Ikigai
Meemo’s story draws inspiration from Ikigai — the Japanese concept of finding purpose in life. A common occurrence in people struggling with their mental health is a lack of purpose. As I, and many others have personally experienced, life can often feel like a listless, never ending journey with no inherent joy. It can be easy to have a negative outlook when it comes to failure, and struggle to find contentedness and peace in the world around.
With Meemo and his journey, we hope to impart some of the lessons we’ve learned through studying Ikigai in a simple and light-hearted way. We want to offer a different perspective and give a gentle reminder about the beauty in life.
In his book, Miralles explains the Japanese concept of discovering Ikigai. This involves finding balance between:
- What you love,
- What the world needs,
- What you’re good at, and
- What you can be paid for.
Too often in the modern world we care about what we can be paid for (yes, rich in this space I know) at the cost of what we are passionate about. Often, we are completely neglecting what the world needs. And usually, the result is that we feel unfulfilled in some way.
The Art
We spent a lot of time trying to make sure that the art style (and artist) aligned with our message. We trawled through (so many) artists, focusing on those with personal experiences with mental health and who portrayed their emotions and experiences through their art. When we came across Jessy, we knew it was the right fit. Her use of colour, her depiction of fantastical characters and “exploding minds” caught our eye immediately, and we knew she was the right person to bring our idea to life.
The Meemos you see in the collection have different stages of Maha — starting with the “stubs”, or undeveloped Mahas, and expanding out to the greatest Mahas. In each Maha, you can see bursts of colour and personality, acting as external representatives to what goes on inside our minds.
The Team
Throughout our team, we have accumulated decades of experience in our respective fields, branching across medicine and clinical practice, software and product development, cognitive sciences, consulting, operations, design, law and accounting.
We’re incredibly grateful to have the team that we do: Jessy, Aileen, Chloe and our community mod team; our psychologists Ying and Margaret; and our company’s backbone — Neo Legal, our legal team, Eelin, our accountant, and Ryan, our product dev lead.
While this wasn’t our core intent when forming our team, at the forefront of innovation should be diversity, and the fact that our team is women-led is something that we’re proud of. We hope to continue the trend of diversity and inclusion with our project, and support others doing the same!
For whoever’s made it to this point — we appreciate you. We hope to see you in our Discord or on Twitter (twitter.com/meemosworld)!
Puppy tax:
[1] Beck, A. T. (1993). Cognitive therapy: past, present, and future. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 61(2), 194.
[2] Mekler, E. D., Brühlmann, F., Tuch, A. N., & Opwis, K. (2017). Towards understanding the effects of individual gamification elements on intrinsic motivation and performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 71, 525–534.