Revisiting The Problem, Its Significance & Relevant Work

What is/are the problem(s)?

• Companies are designing digital products and services to be increasingly addictive. Success isn’t measured in quality of engagement or value provided but in clicks, time spent, likes. In The Best Interface Is No Interface, Golden Krishna argues the reason for these metrics is the prevalence of advertising-based business models. The more eyeballs on a website for longer periods of time, the higher the revenue.
• The internet is a source of distractions (ads, videos, updates, notifications) that are fighting for users’ attention. Most digital products are designed in a way that encourages multitasking. Users are constantly shifting between media sources, both intentionally and unintentionally. Such high levels of multitasking mean that users’ brains are having to rapidly shift focus from one thing to the next. Every time a user shifts tasks they incur, what Gloria Mark calls, a switch cost; the effort needed to refocus one’s attention. It affects one’s ability to engage deeply with the task at hand and for long periods of time. It is worth noting that continuous external interruptions also increase users’ propensity to interrupt themselves even without external triggers.
• The ability to constantly access social media, videos, etc. from mobile devices coupled with constant stream of information results in extremely high smartphone usage. In addition, engagement with products/content is often mindless–done out habit rather than need.

Source

What is the significance of this topic? Why is it important?

• Our ability to choose how users spend their time and direct their attention is being affected, their sense of agency is being affected.
• We losing sight of the real, human values at play as digital services are being designed for urgency and engagement.
• We lose sight of the underlying goals we’re striving towards. E.g. instead of having meaningful conversations with friends, Facebook becomes a platform we go to for engaging in mindless consumption of content.
• In extreme cases, excessive technology consumption can lead to addiction.
• It is, hopefully, a small step towards designing products and services that help users cope with information overload, give them greater agency over their technology consumption, and align with their values.

What work has already been done in this space (to understand or address these issues)?

Distraction

Tristan Harris, TED Talk

Thrive App

Multitasking

Cognitive control in media multitaskers: Two replication studies and a meta-Analysis

The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress

Tech Addiction

reSTART Net Addiction Recovery

The neurochemistry of smartphone addiction