We’re here to help more people
see themselves clearly.
That’s our bit for the world.
Our why.
Most of us go through life with a blurry picture of how we actually work: what moves us, the role we tend to give other people, the kind of world we feel at home in. A clearer picture, offered for free, is useful. Helping more people find their way in the world is why what-world-way exists.
Self-awareness shouldn’t be a luxury, locked behind a price most people won’t pay. So the core (a free read on who you are) stays free. The more people who can see themselves a little more clearly, the better, wherever they are and whatever they bring to it.
Self-knowledge isn’t the end of it. It’s the start. When you can see how you’re built, you can live more in step with it: with yourself, with the people around you, and with the kind of world you actually want to move through. We’re not here to tell anyone which way that should be. People have every right to their own. We just help you see clearly enough to choose it.
There’s a clock on this, too. We think AI is going to reshape work on a large scale over the next few years: jobs changing, some disappearing, new ones appearing, even robots making local manufacturing viable again instead of sending it offshore. A lot of people are about to go through real change, and change on that scale brings personal, social, and even global strain. A clearer sense of who you are won’t fix any of that. But when the ground shifts under your work, knowing how you’re built is a steadier place to stand. We hope it helps, at least a little.
And the read has to be good.
None of this works if the picture isn’t a fair one. For seeing yourself clearly to actually help (to let you move more in step with yourself and the people around you), the read has to be honest about what it can and can’t yet show. So we build it carefully, test it in the open, and say plainly where the evidence stands. Good science isn’t a side project here. It’s what makes the help real rather than just flattering, and what lets it nudge the world a little more effectively.
We’re a non-profit.
We’re a company limited by guarantee. No shareholders. Nobody takes a profit out of it. No investors waiting for an exit, no pressure to monetise the thing that should stay free. What we make goes back into doing this better and reaching more people.
How it travels, and how you can help.
We have almost no money for advertising, and probably never will have much. So mostly what-world-way travels the ordinary way: someone finds their portrait useful and mentions it to someone who’d find it interesting. There’s no reward for passing it on.
If your result means something to you, telling one person it would suit is the ask. And even that’s optional. You can also compare with someone: send a link, they take the tests, the site reads the two portraits together. That’s a small first step toward people understanding each other a little better.
If you’d simply like to follow along, the occasional newsletter is the quietest way to stay in touch.
This is just the beginning.
We are a small team doing one thing carefully, and trying to reach as many people as we can. The picture is bigger than one assessment: building links with people and communities who care about the same thing, finding ways to support each other, and opening the work up over time. Portrait first, then compare, then more ways for people to understand each other. What’s here now is the first step, not the finished thing.
If more people are a little more in step with themselves, and so with each other and the world they live in, the world might be a little better for it. That is what we are trying to do.
Years ago I sat in a room listening to a debate about whether it is best to back this cause or that one, and realised mine wasn’t a specific cause at all. My background is software; my pull has always been what makes people tick. So rather than try to save one rainforest — and maybe move the needle, maybe not — I’d try to help a great many people see themselves clearly and find their own way more effectively, and trust that what they then do, in sum, makes more difference than anything I could do on my own. Originally it had a project name, the Alignment Project. The name didn’t survive; the idea is the reason any of this exists.
— Jon