Behavioral Persona
I interviewed RJ and learned a lot about his personality, motivations, and phone use habits. Below, I’ve developed a persona of him organized into a neat chart.
| Name of persona: Relaxation RJ | Project | Team name/individual name
Team 14 / Amara |
| Role: | RJ is a 20-year-old in his junior year at Stanford University that enjoys spending time alone to relax. | |
| Goal | RJ wants to stop scrolling through social media when he’s spending time alone. He believes that if he replaces time spent on Twitter and Instagram with activities like reading and painting, he can improve his life. | |
| Motivation | RJ struggles to get out of bed in the morning because social media is the first thing that he checks when he wakes up. He feels like he’ll have a happier start to his day if he stays off his phone in the morning.
Also, RJ felt proud of himself during the times that he lowered his social media usage in the past. He believes social media has worsened his mental health since it lowers his attention span and serves as a pacifier to anxieties he doesn’t want to address. He wants to make decisions that improve his mental health. |
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| Conflict | RJ enjoys scrolling through humorous content on social media. TikTok humor in particular, according to RJ, is a form of humor that he can’t access anywhere else. His friends are funny, but TikTok provides a unique audiovisual experience. RJ also feels that by being off social media completely, he wouldn’t be able to stay up to date with friends or post content that he enjoys. | |
| Attempts to Solve | RJ tried putting his phone on his couch before bed which helped him stay off his phone at night.
He also deleted TikTok earlier this month and he hasn’t downloaded it again. He does miss being on TikTok, nonetheless. |
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| Setting/ Environment | RJ is a pretty social college student. He spends a lot of his day studying, eating, and going out with friends. Since he lives in a dorm on campus, he constantly has friends in close proximity. He is in an environment where alone time is pretty limited. | |
| Tools | iPhone with screen time data, potential accountability partners (nearby friends), resources to do other activities (books, painting supplies), a single dorm room | |
| Skills | Self-Discipline/Awareness → RJ keeps track of his mental health enough to realize when he needs to cut back on social media.
Painting → RJ is a great artist and enjoys being in a state of flow when painting. Independence → RJ doesn’t constantly depend on others to have a good time. When he’s not with his friends, he takes the time to entertain himself in other ways. |
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| Routines | Checks Twitter in the morning as soon as he wakes up before getting out of bed
Scrolls through Twitter and answers texts right before bed → now puts phone on couch before bed to avoid going on it Checks Instagram when alone time starts |
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| Habits | Scrolls through social media when craving a distraction from his anxieties
Scrolls through phone during awkward in-between periods of alone time (like waiting for a friend in public) Keeps scrolling through content for hours, eventually losing track of time |
Journey Map
For my journey map, I decided to chart RJ’s emotions regarding his phone use throughout the day. The timeline starts from when he wakes up in the morning to when he falls asleep. I separated the timeline into three parts (Wake Up, Midday, and Before Bed) since our app could potentially target one of those three parts of the day rather than all three at once. Phone use when someone is procrastinating getting out of bed, for example, is different from phone use when awkwardly waiting in a long line at the package center.
