Our team is looking at reducing screen usage throughout a person’s morning routine. We have found that the majority of screen time happens when the person is laying in bed. Wake up alarms trigger people to pick up their phones, turn off the alarm, and get sucked in to notifications.
My persona is Sleepy Sam. Sam isn’t thrilled at the prospect of getting up and out of his warm cozy bed. Looking at his phone is a pleasant distraction, as well as an opportunity to be – at least in some ways – productive.
| Name of persona: Sleepy Sam | Project | Team name/individual name Team 20/Sonya |
| Role: | Stanford masters student in Engineering | |
| Goal | I want to start my day on the right foot because it sets the tone for the rest of the day. | |
| Motivation | I want (the goal) because I am highly social (I get emotional fulfillment from staying in touch with my friends and family) and I also love my schoolwork (I want to start the day feeling ready). | |
| Conflict | I have so many things I need to do and want to do in the morning but not enough time to do it all. It’s difficult to make sure I get through all the necessary things (sleep, shower, food) when I am tempted by the fun things (social media, memes, conversations with teammates). Time is a finite resource and I’m reasoning over many competing desires. | |
| Attempts to Solve | I have an alarm for getting up. I try to monitor my screen usage throughout the morning. | |
| Setting/ Environment | Home. Roommates are around – these provide social interaction that is less addictive than a phone while also subtly keeping him motivated to keep moving with his morning routine.
Bedroom. Bed is comfortable and tempting. It’s just nice to start your day laying in bed on your phone. Bathroom. Will inevitably scroll while getting ready to take a shower. |
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| Tools | (Several) alarms. Roommates that are engaging him with social interaction. | |
| Skills | Self-restraint. | |
| Routines | Wake up. Scroll in bed. Go to bathroom. Scroll in bathroom. Shower. Go back to bedroom. Scroll in bedroom. Make breakfast and run out the door. | |
| Habits | Checking notifications and scrolling. Bathroom routine in the mornings. Meal that he makes for breakfast. |
Here is a map of Sleepy Sam’s journey. On future iterations of this map, it would be interesting to narrow in on the “Laying in Bed” portion of the map. Which parts of that time block are spent looking at screens? Is this active (sending messages), semi-active (forwarding memes), semi-passive (reading the news), or passive (scrolling)?
In our study, we had people rate how pleasant, how connected, and how calm they feel during each of their morning activities on a scale of 1-5. Hence, the numbers you see are the aggregate of these ratings.
