Motivation

I have a pretty complicated family history. My parents are both immigrants and my grandparents all hail from different backgrounds: my grandfather is of south-east Indian descent, his wife has roots in both China and West Africa. This is only on my mother's side. My father's parents both have ancestries dating back to Scandinavia and Germany, with historical ties to the Dutch royal family even. I have always felt blessed to be the culmination and concoction of my families rich and diverse history.

I have always been obsessed with my families heritage and subsequently, the stories of our history. During Covid, I turned the walls of my room into a map detailing important events and movements of my ancestors, information I had gathered from speaking to family members and reading historical journals that were passed through our family. An understanding of all the places one is from is essential to understand where one is going (to be dramatic).

As a result of this love for my families history, I have fallen in love with the art of story telling. The unfortunate thing that my journey to learning about my family history is that there are always going to be too many stories to tell. It will be hard to hear them all.

This realization really hit me the most this past Christmas. I spent it with my mother's side of the family and really made an effort to ask more and more questions to my Grandparents. As I have matured and enter my 20s, I realize that all the people before me have aged at the same pace and have their own anecdotes to share.

I love my Grandpa a lot. I call him Papa. Papa loves large family gatherings and took all the men of the family out to breakfast one morning. I asked him about his first job; how he achieved his life work; how he met my Grandma (who we call Mama). He claims to have met her at a camp they were both counselors at when they were in their early 20s, and then just showed up at her house unnaounced one day. A year later they got married. From this one breakfast, I learnt so much about Papa. I wanted to learn so much more. There are so many more questions to ask.

I love Mama a lot. One day, we went to run errands together. We went to get coffee and get the car washed. While waiting for the car to be detailed, she told me her side of the story of meeting Papa. It was so funny how different her story was compared to his. We all chatted about it later that night over dinner.

I love Mama and Papa a lot. I wish I had the time to listen to all their stories but unfortunately, there isn't enough time to ask all the questions. That's why I created Joanna.ai, an agent who can speak to my grandparents, ask them about their stories, help us contain their stories in the form of a memoir, and ask all of the questions.

There are other ways to do what I have tried to do with Joanna. The challenge with existing solutions for preserving family stories lies in their interfaces. Many tools focus on automated storytelling through mobile apps or web platforms that require storytellers to sit down and navigate unfamiliar technology. For someone like Papa, a pastor from Trinidad, these solutions are not practical—he wouldn’t feel comfortable using them. I designed Joanna.ai to be different: a story-preserving agent that integrates seamlessly into natural communication channels like WhatsApp. Instead of asking Papa to download an app or spend hours in front of a computer, Joanna allows him to share his stories effortlessly by communicating with her, just as he would text me or other family members.

Mama and Papa have been the beta testers of this product and they love it. It has been awesome to empower them to share things that otheriwse they might not have been able to get down or even remember.

I am super proud of this product and am excited for its potential use. I am happy that I found a way to ask all of the questions.