Addapted

The “Unending Conversation,” a metaphor introduced by philosopher Kenneth Burke, suggests that conversations are ongoing, then you arrive, you contribute, and after you depart, the conversation will still go on.

With online communication becoming more isolating and unreliable, ADDAPTED is transforming the vertical post and comment routine into horizontal conversations. It is about the addaptability of online discussion, of deliberation.

Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action. (1941; rpt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).

Journalist Michael Erard wrote, “Conversation was the model for online interaction, but the technology couldn’t sustain what real conversations required.” Since the 1970s, the design and experience of online conversation, or plainly comments, has not changed much, if not at all.

“The simple top-to-bottom arrangement of autonomous lines of text had a huge influence on the culture of commenting,” creating a hierarchy that became territorial, polarizing, and divisive between creators and commenters.

Erard, Michael, “No Comments.” The New York Times Magazine, 20 September 2013.

Our platform interrupts the restrictive online scroll and allows you to swipe into the conversation, change the topic, edit everything, annotate, or start over completely creating multiple alternate versions. You can also select text and support words written by someone else to build something new, together.

When you’re done adding and addapting, you can revisit the entire exchange, review what everyone contributed, and learn from every addaptation.

ADDAPTED is free for individuals to participate with our basic tools — writing, reading, and addapting all public content. Subscriptions are available for individuals to access all premium content. Royalty options are available for individuals or groups offering premium content for individual membership.

Company accounts are available for businesses and schools with additional analytics and advanced tools, conversation analysis, and charts.

Advertising options, including featured challenges, engage directly with the ADDAPTED audience through participation within the platform.

ADDAPTED is designed for businesses and their teams through creative ideation (35-49); schools and their students through collaborative storytelling (18-24); and individuals looking to connect with people in their community through civic and cultural conversations (25-34).

ADDAPTED was born from the Summer Writing Project, a storytelling app designed to help writers connect with readers. As writers posted serialized stories, one chapter at a time, readers had the opportunity to provide immediate quantitative and qualitative feedback.

People participated from all over the world with 7,042,952 words written and 936,359 stories read. During this time the app received awards and recognition for creativity and innovation in several publications.

The innovation of the storytelling app happened during the conversations between creators and commentors. Readers contributed to the creative process by sharing ideas with writers as the story was written.

With what we learned, we simplified the concept and built a new app allowing people to add, addapt, and build stories together one sentence at a time. We called it ADDAPTED.

We tested ADDAPTED at Chapman University to learn how students (18-24) and faculty (35-49) would respond to the app interface, specifically the horizontal navigation of sentences. Feedback provided us with insight for how this tool could be used for all types of discourse and ideation.