You probably know all about that endless scrolling through Facebook and not finding the things you actually wanted to see. Your attention is hijacked and you’ve probably seen 5 different ads already. Welcome to the Digital Attention Crisis: the situation where companies like Facebook and Instagram want to keep your attention for as long as possible to earn money. As part of the Time Well Spent movement, we want give students their automony back.
This project was together with: Damayanti Blankestijn and Joop Akerboom
During this project I was in charge of the research part, I did a lot of research on the problem and the possible ways to solve it. I did interviews, user tests and eye tracking.
Nominated for:
Golden Dot Award 2019
Client:
Tristan Harris, Time Well Spent
Time:
20 weeks
Type:
Behavioural design
Deliverables:
Brainstorming, Desk and field research, Prototyping, Testing, Iteration, Product Branding.
The Results
“Without notification, better concentration.”
“A silent application which helps you delay distraction instead of delaying your homework, spend your time more consciously and feel in control of your smartphone use.”
Designed for CMD students at the University of Amsterdam so they would get into the habit of purposefully spending time on study-related work, by giving them more autonomy over their time spent on a smartphone, encouraging them to achieve the goals they want to achieve.
Promptus is a smartphone application where the user has the option to set how long he wants to work undisturbed. The period of undisturbed work is linked to not receiving notifications. This minimizes the possibility of distraction so they will work purposefully.