Overview

• This research is on the app, Youper. The official website of the company can be found here.
• Youper was created by a team of experts led by psychiatrist Dr. Jose Hamilton, and is powered by Artificial Intelligence as an assistant to monitor and improve emotional health.
• "The app employs a mood tracker, a chat interface, and guided mindfulness and learns from each user with AI to deliver the most effective support available."
• It has been lauded as a "great example of combining technology with emotional well being."
• Founded in 2016, Youper raised $0.5 million in seed funding in 2018, and also received seed funding from Goodwater Capital of $3 million, in 2019.
• Competitors of Youper include: Woebot, Wysa, and X2's Tess.

How It Works

• Youper seeks to "differentiate with a focus on personalization, combining mental health research and user data to match the right psychological techniques with users."
• Youper comes with a suite of free tools including the therapy assistant, mood tracking, journaling, mindfulness relaxation, essential learnings about the mind, and consolidated emotional and behavioral data.
• A subscription of $18.99 per month unlocks hundreds of curated, goal-tailored challenges.

Usage and Popularity

• The Youper app has a rating of 4.6 from over 46,000 reviewers on Google Play Store.
• According to the CEO, the app has been downloaded more than 1,000,000 times.
• There were about 70,000 downloads of the app in February 2020.
• The Youper website receives over 25,000 visitors monthly, and an estimated 496 daily unique visitors.
• Most of the app's users are women and young adults. The CEO speculates that there are more women using the app because "women are facing new challenges in our society by conquering new spaces and assuming new roles, and that poses an emotional toll. Another reason is that women are more tuned into self-care than men."
• The average time spent during each session with the chatbot is approximately 7 minutes, with 80% of users reporting a reduction in negative moods after 1 conversation.
• According to the CEO after 30 days, 25% of people who signed up for Youper are still active users.