Gina

Your screen time assistant to help you be more mindful of your phone usage

How I navigated a problem and built a user-oriented solution

This is the design of an app that helps you build a habit of being mindful while using your phone. It reduces unnecessary screen time and helps you concentrate on your work.

Here, I describe the process of how I designed it.

Go straight to the solution

User research

Initially, was just trying to find a solution to one of the most common problems of the modern world, ‘phone addiction’.

What I looked for while conducting interviews:

Do people view this as a problem? Or are people okay with the way things are?

What are people’s beliefs about phone addiction?

What have people tried to do about their addiction? What has worked? What has not?

I interviewed 20 people in the age range 18-35.

Click here for a tentative questionnaire from my research plan

What did I find?

This is definitely a problem that people don’t have an effective solution for.

The cycle:

Keeping a phone around is inevitable. Sometimes, it’s needs for WORK and productivity

Once they start using a phone, a lot of time is automatically wasted

Wants to reduce screen time but no method has worked yet

Some things people have said:

“Sometimes I pick my phone up for some sort of work and automatically start scrolling instagram before anything else. Before I realise, a half an hour has passed and I have forgotten what I picked my phone up for!”

17/20 people had this problem

“I often use my phone for work, it’s inevitable. But if my phone is in my hand, I’m on facebook!”

18/20 people had this problem

“I’m used to feeling guilty after wasting time really. So much so, I don’t even feel the guilt anymore.”

17/20 people had this problem

“I think about reducing my phone time every day, but nothing has worked so far and I doubt anything really will.”

20/20 people had this problem

I said “wait a second, what do you mean no method has worked yet?”

What have people done in the past for this?

Usual Methods

People used popular methods like using app blockers, uninstalling addictive apps and stopping notifications.

Unusual Methods

People used unusual methods like meditation, using a low quality phone or even giving their phone to their mom!

Sense a Pattern?

None of these methods have worked for anyone that I interviewed.

This only made me realise that

having phones around is inevitable
all these methods involve blocking apps or phones, but blocking them away is clearly not the solution as it doesn’t work.

The problem

It was easy to mindlessly hop onto apps like Instagram, Netflix and even Zomato and waste time without much thought.

Mindlessness was the problem, mindfulness could be a possible solution.

How might we make smartphone usage more mindful?

Ideation and brainstorming

These are thumbnails of the ideas I sketched out.

All these ideas were thought of from a perspective of ‘how can we make the user mindful that they’re using their phone’ rather than ‘ how can we stop the user from using their phone’.

After a thorough SWOT analysis, I narrowed it down to 1 solution.

The Solution

Every time the user uses a time wasting app (say a social media app) for a set amount of time (say 3 mins), you get a prompt that makes you be mindful.

You choose from 3 options:

I'm working/being productive on this app

Oh right! I'll get back to work

I'm supposed to chill right now, I have some time to spare

You are then taken on various journeys from there on depending on what option you pick.

If the user is working on the phone, he/she is assisted to stay focused and finish the task at hand. This is done by asking the user which apps will be used for work and then asking them to be mindful of their phone usage if they go to an app which isn't related to the task at hand.

Paper prototyping content to make sure it's not pushy, rather amicable.

The wording is carefully designed to feel amicable, not Intruding and pushing you to be mindful. It has also been thoroughly tested for the same.

Gina is an assistive character added to make it feel more personalized than digital.

You thereby save yourself from wasting time by rabbit holing on an addictive app!

User Testing

I tested this concept with two people as they worked from home over a span of 2 days.

Areas of Success:

“Even if I opened Instagram on autopilot, I got mindful and got off without wasting much time”

“After a couple times, I opened Instagram and actually thought oh, I gotta stop using after 2 minutes and I stopped right then, before I could waste anymore time!”

“What I liked was that I didn’t have to block apps out, I kinda got weaned off of them on my own accord, which was nice”

Areas of Improvement:

“It was annoying after some time, I just wanted to watch some reels without seeing a pop up. I wanted to disable Gina. Sheer will to really try (Gina) out kept me from doing so haha.”

Fin

That’s all from my project Gina for now.

The next step would be working on the feedback from the user research, but that’s probably for another case study.

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Gina

How I navigated a problem and built a user-oriented solution

User research