Project Proposal & Narrative

Mindspace is a digital detox app that helps users reduce unwanted screen-time by setting personalized targets based on usage behaviour.

With the increased complexity of human relationships with technology, it is becoming increasingly complicated to figure out what areas of digital usage needs to be reduced.
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Mindspace aims to reduce phone addiction and screen-time through a gradual and sustainable habit changing system without locking users out of apps. This system would allow users to cut out specific habits within apps while keeping other portions of the app functional.

Mindspace learns a user’s actions and reduces only repeated actions that the user chooses to reduce during their usage. Ultimately, the app aims to give users the option to seamlessly use their devices however they wish while training themselves to cut down on unproductive actions.

Problem space

Phone addiction has been one of the main harmful byproducts of advanced technologies. While being on the rise year by year, phone addiction has been associated with poor mental health in youth and adults. This problem drove the passion behind finding new and better solutions to help people manage their technology is a healthier manner.

Key user

User Frustrations

Matthew struggles to reduce screen-time due to the complications between separating important and non important activities on his phone and computer.

With multiple work related group chats throughout various apps, it’s hard for Matthew to stop himself from jumping between social media and work. Sometimes, important tasks are done on the same apps that cause unproductive behaviours thereby making deleting those apps a tough choice.

Due to the nature of this work, Matthew needs constant access to his phone and computer which makes reducing phone addiction a tough and confusing task, often leading to forgetting about it all together.

Designed Solution

Mindspace uses a temporary monitoring period to learn user behaviours for creating personalized targets. Targets are based on actions and behaviours rather than specific apps.

For instance, Mindspace can reduce endless scrolling on Instagram's "for you" feed while allowing continued usage of instagram messages.

Screen-time targets are specific to the user and sensitive to the amount of usage through the monitoring period.

Personalized targets

Based on the user responses, Mindspace will put together a target schedule. These targets are based on how much “more” or “less” the user wants to spend on specific activities. For example, a user can choose to cut down on instagram feed scrolling while not cutting down on Instagram DMs if they have important group chats they want to be active in. Mindspace does not lock apps out entirely to prevent losing functions of large apps that are multi-purposed.

Generated targets are fully personalized. For example, if a user scrolls through instagram 5 hours a day, the Mindspace target for them will be 2.5 hours per day. If another user who does the same activity for 2 hours per day, they will get a target of 1 hour per day.

This system makes sure usage targets are set realistically based on the user's normal behaviour.

Gradual habit change

Mindspace takes an approach of gradual increase and decrease of targets to ease users into long term habit change. As secondary research revealed, long term habit change is better achieved through cycles of easy and intense detoxification rather than going cold turkey. The aim is to have users stick to their screen-time commitments long term.

Monetary commitment

Research

Primary research started with user interviews with 2 selected groups of users. Users were asked questions about phone usage and digital habit formation. Insight from interviews helped guide the direction of secondary research. During secondary research, a literature review was done on scientific papers about phone addiction in young adults. Furthermore, a study and analysis was done on a documentary about phone addiction which was recommended by the project’s mentor. Lastly, a competitor analysis was done on some of the top digital detox apps available at the time.

User Interviews

The first group of users I interviewed were interaction design students at Emily Carr University. Being interaction design students meant this group dealt with high mobile phone usage due to constant testing of apps alongside regular usage. I aimed to get deep insights about this group's phone usage habits and the factors that contributed to those habits.

Interviews were conducted in groups of 3-4 participants in the format of an open discussion. 3 sessions of interviews were conducted with a total of 10 participants across the 3 groups. Questions were asked as discussion topics and notes were taken about insights gathered from the exercise.

The following are the questions discussed in the interviews:

1. How can someone know what parts of their screen time is good or bad screen time? How can users stay motivated to keep up better phone usage habits?
   

2. How can we avoid situations were users continue with poor phone usage habits even when they know those habits can be harmful? Similar to knowing smoking is bad but continuing to smoke.
   

3. If you could choose how much you can limit your phone usage, how many hours per day would you use your phone?
   

Gathering Insights

Being a group discussion, there were a variety of answers to the discussion topics. Discussion notes were collected by a colleague during the interview process. The following are insights gathered from the answers given by our participants:

• Some phone activities might be useful for one user but not useful for another user. For example, a social media manager might need to actively use social media while a student might need to cut down on social media usage to spend more time studying.
  

• The judgment between good and bad screen time can be unclear.
  

• Asking users to decide what screen time they want without knowing their own usage behaviours might be too big of a task. It can feel discouraged.
  

• Motivational factor can help users stay on top of screen-time goals. Maybe there can be a monetary penalty when users don't hit targets? What if users were rewarded when they hit targets?
  

Interviews round 2

The second round of interview was done with my project mentor, Haige Armen. Haig was my instructor during my final year of Interaction Design at Emily Carr and he was kind enough to guide me through my final year projects.

A one on one interview was conducted with Haige about topics pertaining habit formation and long term habit breaking techniques. The goal of this interview was to gain deeper insights about approaching a solution for managing phone addiction. Being an interaction designer himself, Haig was able to give me some good insights to think about while also recommending secondary resources for further research.

Interview with Haige was conducted as an open discussion with the following discussion topics:

1. How can we categorize screen time into productive and unproductive? How can we make sure it accommodates different types of users who each have their own usage types?
   

2. What are some methods to incentivize users to stay on track of targets?
   

3. Should users be charged a monthly fee?How can there be gamification or a reward system?
   

Gathering insights

• Cold turkey of quitting habits rarely works.
  

• Consider a monitoring period for the app to understand what screen usage to reduce.
  

• Gradual periods of high detox and low detox can lead to long term habit formation.
  

• It's difficult to categorize screen time into productive and unproductive screen time since usage behaviours are different between users. Labels are more of a spectrum.
  

Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis was done on some of the top digital detox apps on the market at the time. Each competitor was analyzed for key features, strengths, and weaknesses. Below is the summary of the competitor analysis done.

Key weaknesses identified

• Most apps during setup ask users how much they want to use their phone (Example, 1 hours, 2 hours, 3 hours etc). This is a difficult question for a user to answer without much knowledge about their own usage.
  

• Most competitors simply lock users out of apps entirely which can be tough for users that use large multi-purposed apps like facebook or instagram.
  

• There is a lack of features to motivate users to stay on top of digital detox goals.
  

Conclusion from analysis

Based on identified weaknesses in competitor products, the following became 3 main areas of focus for designing Mindspace:

Motivation is an important factor to keep users committed and dedicated to following through with reducing unwanted screen-time.

With an easy setup process when, the barrier of entry to use Mindspace is reduced. This means Mindspace needs to facilitate the process of creating targets for users rather than directly asking users how much they want to use their phones, something many other competitors do.

With gradual habit change techniques, Mindspace can make sure the periods of detoxification are long term and achievable rather than sudden peaks of digital detoxification which can become discouraging for highly addicted users.

Ideation

Based on research results, the ideation phase was kicked off by creating a project pitch that addressed many of the weaknesses identified in competitor analysis. The project pitch was discussed in interviews with colleagues and revised. Ideation was taken further using mindmapping, SWOT analysis, and Moodboard creation. These tools helped revise the project's pitch leading us to beginning the early design phase.

Project Pitch

Mindspace is an app for reducing unwanted screen time. It aimes to use habit forming techniques and incentives that help users use their phones with better moderation. Mindspace adapts to different styles of phone usages and create targets based on specific user behaviours. The goal of Mindspace is to help both heavy and light users with personalized solutions aimed at sustained lower phone usage long term.

SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis was done with a group of interaction design students to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses in my project idea.

Mindmap

A mindmap was created as an exercise to make connections between problems that arise from phone addiction and how they relate to the systems that exist today. This mindmap helped with identifying the addictive properties of phones that lead to mental health problems. The following are some of these identified areas:

• Phones have been made to be pleasing to use.
  

• Social media algorithms promote continuous scrolling.
  

• Seeing life of others on social media leads to FOMO (fear of missing out).
  

• News can bring stress and anxiousness.
  

• Digital content is designed to shorten our attention (example: short form video content).
  

Conclusion from SWOT and mindmap

SWOT analysis alongside a mindmap helped in identification of addictive factors of phones. Using this knowledge, I was able to identify the targets for Mindspace’s training of a user’s phone usage. This insight helps Mindspace understand which activities should be categorized as “addictive behaviours” that should be reduced.

For example, knowing how endless social media scrolling feeds anxiety, Mindspace will label social media scrolling as an addictive behaviour and would therefore prompt users with a nudge to discontinue when users fall into the cycle of that activity.

Early design phase and branding

Early design phase started with creating a mood-board to capture the feel of the brand. A logo was created for the mood board alongside colours and font selection. The objective of this was to have a branding direction for the next phases of design.

Design development

Design development started by creating concept sketches of Mindspace's UI. The sketches were created with insights from research and ideation in mind. Sketches were then developed into high fidelity mockups

Sketches to UI concepts

The following are sketches ideating the various screens of Mindspace the users would use to set up targets and be nudged to prevent continuing activities that they want to cut down on. When creating sketches, the following remained the main area of focus based on our research phase:

Sketch to features - monitoring period for target setup

Sketching initial designs gave inception to Mindpace's monitoring period feature for setting up targets. One of the core objectives of Mindspace was to make initial target setup as frictionless and easy as possible. The aim of doing this was to make sure users can jump right into decreasing unwanted screen-time without having to think much about figuring out the ideal screen-time for their lifestyle.

The sketch above introduced a "more or less" option for doing a specific action. This UI gave me the idea of setting up screen-time targets during regular phone usage with a "more or less" option that allows users to choose how much they want to do a certain activity during the act.

As a result, the monitoring period feature was created which would allow users to normally use their phones for 1 week to set up screen-time targets along the way. Based on user responses, Mindspace would put together a set of targets for certain app usages. This would make the initial setup of targets easy and frictionless, thereby reducing the probability of users getting discouraged before starting their detoxification journey.

Modifying screen-time targets

While Mindspace's monitoring period facilitated the initial setup of creating screen-time targets, there was still a lack of user customization. It is entirely possible that a user might want to modify the targets automatically set by Mindspace based on monitoring period.

The below sketches we're selected as possible screens for allowing users to modify targets after monitoring period.

After modifying targets, users will be able to review how much they can do certain activities and confirm them one last time before committing to targets for the next month.

Below are custom UI elements and icons designed for Mindspace.

Final result

Below are of the final screens designed for Mindspace. Throughout this project, Mindspace became an app that helps users with phone addiction through an easy and peronalized screen-time targeting system.

Users are able to set up Mindspace by simply using their phones normally through a one week monitoring period. Throughout monitoring period, users will be asked how much more or less they want to do repeated activities. Based on user responses, Mindspace will generate a set of phone activity targets for users to follow. Giving them one final chance to edit and lock in targets, users will be nudged to stop using their phone during times of high usage. Targets will be activity based rather than app based, meaning users can cut down on certain aspects of large apps while keeping other aspects intact.

Mindspace will cost users 5$/month to use. If targets are successfully reached, Mindspace will become free for that month, thereby giving users motivation to stay on track.