A physicist, marketer, information architect and interactive designer got together and asked a question: Can knowledge truly be curated and generated by a crowd? Actually, they were tapping into a deep philosophical question, the relationship between the wisdom of the expert and the force of the crowd. Can we collect information in a way that takes advantage of both of those things at once?
Relevate is a peer knowledge exchange and database built by a personal human trust network. It is a polling application that maintains the integrity of its results by relying on each user to send questions along to their peers, people who are experts, participants, fans, or witnesses in the same thing they are, and who they know have something thoughtful to say on that topic.
It is a pass-along method that controls quality of information, trusting personal connections to curate and propel questions into the world.
Relevate was a thought experiment ideated by Monique Grimord with the help of Bobak Hashemi, Joseph Scheno, and Cory Siegrist.
Someone sends you a question, you answer, and send the question forward to your friends that are relevant to the topic. Your friends pass it to their friends, and a network of people sharing knowledge is built.
Starting a question means have a real curious interest, and activating your friend circle to engage you, and to engage their various networks.
When a user has been sent four or more questions in the same topic, and given their opinion on each one, they are made an ‘expert’. People outside of your network can shoot questions in that topic at you too.
But you aren’t only limited to information passed from your friends. You can seek out new curiosities by trading or shuffling through questions. Shuffling through questions is an addictive exploration process. With each swipe and click, you see a question sent to you from a friend, or from a stranger, in a topic you are an ‘expert’ in.
