Five beliefs that guide our work improving digital wellness
We recently introduced an Android app, the Before Launcher, a minimal phone interface. It facilitates mindful, distraction-free smartphone usage without sacrificing functionality.
While setting out to build the launcher, we developed a set of principles, established through research and trial and error, that helped us make the design decisions to shape the product. While none of this stuff is new on its own (it has all been written about better by a number of awesome folks, and a few of them are listed below this article), we’ve never applied them to product development.
- Attention and focus are finite, precious resources: People have only so much focus and attention. The same focus and attention we use to make big decisions, we also use to make very small ones. Even small decisions, like not engaging with an interesting notification from your favorite app, or deciding where to park your car, has an incremental cost. Doing nearly anything well requires focus and attention; try not to waste it on something you don’t care about.
- Digital advertising has had an outsized influence on technological innovation: Statistically, there is a good chance over a dozen apps on your phone would love for you to use them right this second simply so you can look at a few ad units. Getting your attention, and keeping it, is how they make money, and app makers are skilled at taking it from us, using cleverly timed and messaged notifications, app icon design, infinite scroll, and many other tricks. While advertising has always used psychology to influence our behavior, they’ve never had a vehicle like digital products and social media to garner such a response.
- Balance is often a struggle, and always a goal: Whether or not phone addiction is a real thing or not (and we think it’s very real). A lot of people spend way too much time on their phones and this isn’t ideal. The average person touches their phone 2,441 times a day and extreme phone users touch their phones >5,400 times! While there are plenty of healthy ways to use your phone, it is clear that it is unhealthy for quite a few people. We should encourage balance where we can.
- Technological innovation is a mostly good thing: We believe that there are many benefits that technology and innovation bring us. We shouldn’t shut ourselves off from it. On my phone, I have access to a lifetimes worth of content, and millions of tools… Anywhere I can get a cell signal. I still feel like I am living in the future. While we absolutely don’t need everything all the time everywhere, technology offers too much utility to shut ourselves off from it.
- We can’t force people to use their phones less: Making a product limited and hard to use isn’t the solution. That approach might work for children… Since they aren’t in charge. But if you have the key, locking the liquor cabinet will only make it take slightly longer for a slightly determined individual to get drunk. That said, we believe we can help people set goals, help them track to them, and help reduce temptation. We just don’t believe in treating adults like children.
Summing it up, we are excited about what technology will bring us in the future but we need to be careful how we consume it and not be consumed by it. These principles guide us, but we are still learning, and we would love to hear what you think.
Last, below are a few of our favorite resources & books that informed our thinking. We recommend taking a look at them if you are interested in going a bit deeper:
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Catherine Price — How to Break up with your phone: http://www.catherine-price.com/how-to-break-up-with-your-phone
Cal Newport — Digital Minimalism: http://calnewport.com/books/digital-minimalism/
Tristan Harris — The Center for Human Design: http://humanetech.com/
Daniel Kahnman — Thinking Fast and Slow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
