The goal of this research is to develop formative theory that identifies software interface design patterns that promote compulsive smartphone usage habits and to invent alternative patterns that promote meaningful usage habits. Americans across diverse communities and all socioeconomic strata report engaging with their smartphones out of habit and in compulsive ways. Though smartphone use in general provides enormous value and quality-of-life enhancements to users, software designs that promote compulsive, habit-forming patterns of engagement leave users feeling frustrated with their own behavior and struggling to make changes. Historically, the scientific literature has examined these phenomena using monolithic constructs like "problematic Internet use" and "smartphone addiction," and design research has innovated in this space by creating stand-alone mechanisms that support users in self-policing their use of technology, such as lock-out tools and system-wide timers. This project shifts the design focus to the internal workings of the app itself and redesigns the existing experience to be less-habit forming, rather than attempting to combat its habit-forming nature through monitoring tools.
This research will use YouTube and Twitter, two of the most popular apps among American smartphone users, as testbeds for redesign. The first phase of this project will conduct a series of user-centered design activities with participants who identify as routine users of these popular media to understand what they value in their usage experiences, what they wish they could change, and how their behaviors relate to components of the interface. Using existing third-party application programming interfaces provided by the two platforms, the research will then redesign and implement a new version of the client application software for each technology. Finally, a four-week deployment study with twenty-five users of each technology will compare two weeks of baseline usage against two weeks of usage with the redesigned version of the target app. During both the baseline and intervention periods, log data of usage patterns will be collected (including frequency of use, duration of use, context of use, and engagement with various app features), as well as experience sampling method data probing users' satisfaction with their own behaviors. Exit interviews and a larger survey with participants will be conducted following the deployment to understand their experiences with redesigned YouTube and Twitter clients. At the conclusion of the study, these redesigned apps will be made available to the broader public.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
