Nature Identifier: Interbeing

Inspiration

The average GenZ can identify 10,000 corporate logos but fewer than 10 local plants... Quite depressing tbh, but true.

Almost 10 years ago we created the Plum Village app, which now has more than 1M users. Starting from the insights we got from that experience, we built the Interbeing app as an alternative to mainstream nature identification apps which treat the living world like a catalog: name it, log it, forget it.

Instead, we're drawing from the teachings of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh on the inter-dependent nature of everything, to re-awaken our connection with the beings that surrounds us.

What it does

Interbeing identifies any bird, plant, animal, mushroom, or mineral through the phone camera in real-time. But identification is just the "hook"

For each species, we offer: Deep Knowledge: Not just "what" but "how".. their superpowers, survival strategies, and ecological roles

Mindful Encounters: Guided contemplations and breathing exercises connecting you to each being

Interbeing Notes: Reflections on our kinship

Living Collection: Build a personal encyclopedia of encounters, and a growing

Practice Verses: Daily meditations inspired by your discoveries

How we built it

Technical Architecture:

React Native for multi-platform distribution LangChain to mix a few different models in the backend for multi-kingdom identification Vision framework for real-time camera processing RevenueCat for ka-ching

For the UI we chose soft greens, organic shapes, lots of whitespace. It needs lots of refinement still though.

Challenges we ran into

Using a mix of models to recognize everything from minerals to mammals has been quite intense. We're creating an internal encyclopedia of 2M species, in order to reduce latency, which not yet ideal.

We need to further refinde the process of writing unique meditations for thousands of species without becoming generic.

Mindfulness and technology is always a tricky balance..

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We've built a relatively niversal identifier that actually works: birds, bugs, rocks, mushrooms all in one app with 85%+ accuracy. We generated 1k+ unique meditations, feels good to bring a bit of contempaltion in these times! Zero gamification: No points, no leaderboards

What we learned

So far, the biggest surprise was that kids seem to use the meditation features more than adults. They naturally understand interbeing. Also, people want instant results, which is kind of tricky for this use case.

What's next for Nature Identifier: Interbeing

Further refinements across the board, reduce latency, generate audio meditations for each identification, add soundscape recognition (identify birds from audio recordings), mapping local ecosystems (like a web of relationships in your local area).