Software that adapts to our lives

Julian Dumitrascu
Sep 2, 2018 · 6 min read

I posted this text on 28 January 2018.

I think about the issues discussed in this article by Eric Andrew-Gee.
1. smartphones are causing […] damage to our minds and relationships, measurable in seconds shaved off the average attention span, [in] reduced brain power, [in] declines in work-life balance and [in] hours less of family time.
Our attention span has been declining not only because of smartphones, which we can call size-1 computers. Continuity influences our focus. We focus often for several hours on the same thing or group of related things, so we can provide a service or enjoy people’s company at a party. During this time it is challenging to switch focus away from our room or group of people. (Jean-Michel Blanquer, the French education minister, seems to consider this, too.) Computers alert us of others’ new words and deeds, so it is very important how programmers design notifications and how users set notifications. This is a concern of my software development team. We offer notification categories and schemes, and let you associate images, colors, and sounds with these. (Some people find it comfortable to not enable notification sounds or to enable a notification sound for special things sometimes.)
We design this data management program together with you, so that your computing becomes as comfortable and healthy as possible. We invest an important part of our revenue in communicating with our users in order to help them use the software in the ways that benefit them the most. We and the software must ease your work as much as possible and avoid reductions in people’s brain power. We are users the same as you, we are in the same group, we can share a goal: since computing has become a part of our lives, let’s make computer programs work in our best interest!
The means of telecommunication have made it easier to start a conversation with people who are far from us, e.g. who have left their workplace for their home, so we try to get people to work for us in their spare time, too. This is not helpful, because e.g. the service quality may be lower and we might ruin their next day. One’s spare time is so important that I agree to help anyone enjoy as much spare time as they want. Beside excellent software that helps you e.g. set notifications to stop according to a schedule, we task some of our communicators to communicate both publicly and privately about such issues as part of our intent to be supportive of our users’ endeavors; this action can result in many users helping each other respect the importance of offline activities, stay organized, know their priorities, and reach the goals of their projects.
2. [Smartphones] make us more vulnerable to anxiety.
While I did translations, I felt anxious when a client would call me after I had just started working for them. The beginning is always the hardest. One needs to accommodate and to “sink” into the job, ignoring most other things. Unscheduled calls is not what one needs then, nor messages after messages, especially not “instant messages”. (Dan Nixon, an analyst with the Bank of England, refers to this, too.)
A reason for which people are anxious is that the many people with whom communicate seem to us news sources and we fear bad news.
On the one hand we are eager to exchange words with people, on the other hand it is good to schedule calls and in general to set time aside for communication. Because anxiety is not healthy, do communicate with me about any case of anxiety! We’ll improve the design of our software accordingly, help you use our software peacefully, and even provide further guidance.
3. Tristan Harris Feel free to talk with me about design ethics.
4.1 Because most popular websites and apps don’t charge for access, the internet is financially sustained by eyeballs.
We don’t provide advertising services; you can use our software to communicate with anybody without seeing one advertisement. We serve you, you pay us. We build this service to help you reach your goals. You own and control your data. We discuss publicly to whom we give your money. To put it briefly, we give your money to competent and talented people who help you manage your data. We’d agree to include in our agreement with every user a provision like: The service user is an owner of the service for the period covered by their payments. Who will help me find out where such a provision is legal? Anyway, you can vote publicly on many things, so we decide together with you.
4.2 Average users look at their phones about 150 times a day
We can help you not be addicted and use our software only when you really need to schedule a call, process content, learn something, analyze some data etc.
For your spare time we offer things like these:
4.2.1 You can use a size-1 computer to control what our software displays on a large screen, e.g. live videos.
4.2.2 Content users can build relationships with content creators, e.g. artists, and buy content, e.g. the right to listen to an audio file. While Google Play stands out in this field, there is room to improve it. You can discuss with me in detail what you can buy from us in this regard; Google shareholders are welcome to such talks.
5. social media apps nag you to turn notifications on.
I don’t like nagging; I don’t want it in our communication.
Our software will not work against you.
6. Facebook switched the colour of its notifications from a mild blue to attention-grabbing red.
We have tasked ourselves to make as pleasant as possible, e.g. through the choice of colors, what you see on your screen. The interface looks comfortable so that you can work for hours. You can e.g.
- create color schemes,
- set fonts as you please,
- resize and reposition interface components.
7. Instagram exploits this craving by strategically withholding “likes” from certain users.
Without stating anything about Instagram, I write that we neither exploit, nor manipulate people. We provide a tool; the tool must work.
8. photo-sharing app decides you need to use the service more often
I haven’t checked this information. I just note that our tool makes no decisions. We make decisions together with you and set the tool to follow your commands.
9. Our brains […] aren’t built for the geysers of information our devices train at them.
For the times when some users might want to bathe in messages, we let them see what is being posted, even without the language filter. (Each data set has a label that indicates its natural language. When a user creates their profile, they must indicate in what languages they are going to communicate. When you filter data by language, you see only the data posted in those languages.)
But our software has a powerful search function that helps you focus on as few data sets as you please, see relationships among data sets, organize data, and configure data flows that serve you at work or in your spare time.
10. we end up paying attention to all kinds of things that aren’t valuable or interesting
One of the measures we take in this regard is to build and make available in our software large bases of curated public data, so that you find data of more value in a shorter time.
11. between 2006 and 2011, the average number of hours American families spent together per month dropped by nearly a third, from 26 to about 18.
I am willing to help anybody who wants to spend more time with whom they love.
This is a complex discussion, to which the following topics belong:
- What changes in software design leave you the freedom to focus on your loved ones?
- How do our educators communicate with software users so that software users pay enough attention to software users?
I ask this question like this because we are all software users. Remote software users are not more important than the ones in your room.
- We know how live interactions influence us. How do online interactions influence us?
- How important and useful is it to talk with people who live quite far, e.g. in another country?
12. device-free dinner
My team can help you take steps to not let your sleep and meals interrupted, e.g. by computers.

I have more to say and we have more to offer. I’ll continue this conversation when you join it.

sol id

data management program

Julian Dumitrascu

Written by

My teams provide services, data, and software that help people manage their relationships, resources, and data: www.sol.enterprises

sol id

sol id

data management program

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