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Resonance: Drawing from Memories to Imagine Positive Futures through AI-Augmented Journaling

Wazeer Zulfikar, Treyden Chiaravalloti, Jocelyn Shen, Rosalind Picard, Pattie Maes

TL;DR

Resonance is an AI-augmented journaling system that generates memory-grounded, action-oriented suggestions to help users imagine and enact positive future activities. In a two-week randomized controlled trial with 55 participants, Resonance significantly reduced depressive symptoms (PHQ8) and boosted daily positive affect for users likely to act on the suggestions, especially when prompts referenced personal memories and were novel. The findings underscore the value of grounding AI-generated prompts in users’ memories and the potential for imagination to bolster mental wellbeing, while highlighting privacy concerns and the need for flexible, autonomy-respecting designs. The work advances AI-assisted journaling by bridging past experiences with future envisioning through retrieval-augmented generation and memory-grounded prompting, with implications for scalable, low-cost mental health support.

Abstract

People inherently use experiences of their past while imagining their future, a capability that plays a crucial role in mental health. Resonance is an AI-powered journaling tool designed to augment this ability by offering AI-generated, action-oriented suggestions for future activities based on the user's own past memories. Suggestions are offered when a new memory is logged and are followed by a prompt for the user to imagine carrying out the suggestion. In a two-week randomized controlled study (N=55), we found that using Resonance significantly improved mental health outcomes, reducing the users' PHQ8 scores, a measure of current depression, and increasing their daily positive affect, particularly when they would likely act on the suggestion. Notably, the effectiveness of the suggestions was higher when they were personal, novel, and referenced the user's logged memories. Finally, through open-ended feedback, we discuss the factors that encouraged or hindered the use of the tool.

Resonance: Drawing from Memories to Imagine Positive Futures through AI-Augmented Journaling

TL;DR

Resonance is an AI-augmented journaling system that generates memory-grounded, action-oriented suggestions to help users imagine and enact positive future activities. In a two-week randomized controlled trial with 55 participants, Resonance significantly reduced depressive symptoms (PHQ8) and boosted daily positive affect for users likely to act on the suggestions, especially when prompts referenced personal memories and were novel. The findings underscore the value of grounding AI-generated prompts in users’ memories and the potential for imagination to bolster mental wellbeing, while highlighting privacy concerns and the need for flexible, autonomy-respecting designs. The work advances AI-assisted journaling by bridging past experiences with future envisioning through retrieval-augmented generation and memory-grounded prompting, with implications for scalable, low-cost mental health support.

Abstract

People inherently use experiences of their past while imagining their future, a capability that plays a crucial role in mental health. Resonance is an AI-powered journaling tool designed to augment this ability by offering AI-generated, action-oriented suggestions for future activities based on the user's own past memories. Suggestions are offered when a new memory is logged and are followed by a prompt for the user to imagine carrying out the suggestion. In a two-week randomized controlled study (N=55), we found that using Resonance significantly improved mental health outcomes, reducing the users' PHQ8 scores, a measure of current depression, and increasing their daily positive affect, particularly when they would likely act on the suggestion. Notably, the effectiveness of the suggestions was higher when they were personal, novel, and referenced the user's logged memories. Finally, through open-ended feedback, we discuss the factors that encouraged or hindered the use of the tool.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 51 sections, 9 figures, 5 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Mental Time Travel and Wellbeing
  4. AI-augmented Journaling
  5. System Design
  6. Inputting Memories
  7. Suggestion Generator
  8. Personalization of the suggestion
  9. Novelty of the suggestion
  10. Positive framing of the suggestion
  11. Imagination of the Suggestions
  12. User Study
  13. Participants
  14. Conditions
  15. Procedure
  16. ...and 36 more sections

Figures (9)

  • Figure 1: Dashboard of Resonance displaying memories and corresponding imaginations
  • Figure 2: Example suggestion from Resonance
  • Figure 3: PHQ8 scores of participants in Resonance and control condition before and after the study period
  • Figure 4: Affect of participants before and after daily journaling. This included the AI interaction for the experiment condition
  • Figure 5: Affect change of the participant before and after AI interaction conditioned on their likeliness to act on the suggestion
  • ...and 4 more figures