Synthesis

In our synthesis process, we started by putting our baseline data into an empathy map to see the problem from the participant’s point of view and get insights into their habits. This not only helped us design solutions that better meet their needs, but it also enabled a visual representation of our user data in the aggregate.

Empathy Map

After examining the empathy map, we analyzed the user data by placing them on a 2×2 grid that measured the level of impact on their morning routine and the type of factor. The grid showed us that distractions were the main hindrance to completing morning routines and were an external factor we could potentially influence in hopes of reducing the negative impact.

2×2 Grid With Level of Impact on Morning and Type of Factor

To better understand the relationship between participants’ actions and emotions and visualize the connections between them, we created a mind map. The mind map was key in showing us that distractions from devices were a critical problem for participants who couldn’t stick to their planned morning routines. 

Mind Map (Based on Empathy Map)

To further emphasize this and ensure we were understanding the insight correctly, we proceeded to create a connection circle that unpackaged the various feelings and activities mentioned by our participants which revealed that many negative experiences were related to heavy use of electronics in the morning. Moving forwards, we want to delve into the topic of preventing the behavior of unintended electronic use in the morning so that our participants can have more productive morning routines.

Connection Circle (Based on 2×2 Grid)

 

Photo from Synthesis Process

Proto-Personas

We focused on college students as our target group. Grad students and undergrads are two natural categorizations of college students. However, in our case, the reasoning behind such classification goes beyond the academic differences. After interviewing the participants and analyzing their study data, we found out that there is a fundamental difference between the expectations of graduate and undergraduate students from their mornings. They also define a “successful morning” slightly differently with some overlaps. Thus our personas are based on two students: Grace who is a graduate student, and Aaron who is an undergrad.

We notice that Grace and Aaron both want to have a healthy (physically) morning. However, Grace prioritizes mindfulness and being able to do critical thinking in the morning. She wants to read intellectually demanding research papers in the morning when her brain is still not tired. She also wants to spend much of her morning solving research problems. Therefore, being able to focus in the morning is critical for Grace. On the other hand, Aaron endeavors to have a minimal morning routine with healthy habits that will keep him energized for the rest of the day. Since as an undergrad, Aaron has many classes to attend, his morning is cut short by his early first class. He wants to be able to work out, have a decent breakfast, and get mentally ready for the day in the morning. He doesn’t want to rush to class and doesn’t want to skip any basic healthy morning tasks such as having breakfast.

In terms of conflict, Aaron is usually late to bed and wakes up late. He uses the phone and wastes time before falling asleep. However, Grace goes to sleep on time and wakes up on time. Both Aaron and Grace get distracted by their phone after waking up. However, the reasons behind the distraction are slightly different. Aaron spends more time on responding to notifications and browsing social media, whereas, Grace feels the urge to respond to work-related Slack messages and emails early in the morning. Despite many differences, we see that Aaron and Grace have one aspect of their mornings in common – getting distracted by phone/digital devices. Therefore, we narrowed our focus of the project to removing digital distractions from morning activities.

For attempts, Grace takes a more knowledge-based approach whereas Aaron takes an activity-based approach. Grace tries to learn more about healthy morning routines from books and implement them in her life. Aaron does activities that he believes will help him or previously helped him – for instance, working out in the afternoon in order to feel tired at night so that he can fall asleep early. Tools, settings, and environment are very similar for Aaron and Grace since they both are college students.

Journey Maps

The critical observation to be made about the journey maps here is that the timeline entries aren’t at constant intervals. Furthermore, the timeline for Grace’s map is different from Aaron’s. This is because of the differences in their morning expectations. Grace has a longer morning routine since she wants to achieve certain intellectual and academic milestones in the morning. On the other hand, Aaron’s morning schedule is short since his morning’s primary purpose is to ensure that he is energized enough for the rest of day in order to achieve the academic milestones at the later stages of the day. We see that Grace wakes up early in a quite energized state; however, Aaron wakes up late and with low energy.

If we look carefully at Aaron’s energy throughout the day, he is never at the top energy level. This is because he takes a nap in the afternoon in order to make up for the previous night’s lack of sleep which in turn makes him fall asleep late at night, and the cycle continues. Grace, however, goes to bed early and falls asleep soon since she is at her lowest energy level before going to bed. However, neither Aaron nor Grace gets the most out of their mornings because of their unplanned wastage of time on digital devices. While Aaron’s morning routine is partially impacted by the previous night as well, a proper distraction-free morning routine would allow him to stay more energized in the afternoon without having to take a nap, which in return will help him sleep on time at night.

Intervention Idea

From the synthesis of our raw baseline study data as well as working on personas and journey maps, we saw that distractions (primarily coming from the phone) often negatively impact our participants’ morning routines by decreasing their productivity, making them feel disappointed, and/or putting them in a stressed state as they rush through the rest of the routine. While each of our baseline participants as well as future intervention study participants might have different things in mind when it comes to shaping the ideal morning routine, we believe that they could all benefit from going through their planned morning routine tasks/activities without distraction.

Therefore, for our intervention study, we decided to focus on helping people reduce distractions from the moment they wake up to the end of their self-defined morning routine. More precisely, we aim to help them stay away from distractions stemming from the phone. To come up with a feasible and effective intervention idea, each of the team members individually brainstormed 1 to 3 ideas and then came together to discuss and vote on the final three best distinct ideas. We discussed the pros and cons of the top 3 ideas before deciding on the final winner based on feasibility and potential effectiveness.

Top 3 Intervention Ideas

When we met to discuss the ideas we came up with individually, we found that many of the ideas were similar or almost identical, and we also had a wide range of ideas including pure digital solutions to the use of physical tools. We then reorganized this initial list of 11 ideas by merging and refining them into three very distinct ideas that we believe could work well for our participants based on what we found in our primary and secondary research findings.

Idea 1: Ask the participants to pause for 30 seconds whenever they feel the urge to do something unintended on the phone

• How Our Research Led To This Idea
  • In our primary research and synthesis, we found that participants often “mindlessly and unintentionally” reach for their phone or go on a social media app without having planned to do it. Once they turn on the phone screen and get into an app, they naturally start scrolling because new content automatically shows up for them to consume.
  • In our secondary research, we found that simply pausing for a bit before taking action can prevent mindless scrolling on the phone, because the urge often comes suddenly and also goes away quickly if no action is taken upon it.
• Pros
  • The participant might feel empowered when they’re able to fight the urge to go on the phone by simply taking a pause on their own.
  • The participant does not get further distracted by the phone after the pause is over.
• Cons
  • We solely rely on the participant’s will power to pause for 30 seconds whenever they feel the urge, and in reality the participant might not even catch the urge before they open an app mindlessly.
  • It would be difficult for us to collect data on how often the participant is able to catch their urge and pause for 30 seconds because everything would be going on internally in the participant’s mind.

Idea 2: Have the participants send a text message to one of us (the team members) every time they get distracted by their phone

• How Our Research Led To This Idea
  • In our primary research and synthesis, we found that some participants are highly motivated by external factors and expectations, such as having records about them on paper and social accountability. 
  • In our secondary research, we have also found that having an accountability partner is often a good idea to help someone build or break a habit.
• Pros
  • The participant might find it easier to stay away from the phone knowing that someone is in this process with them on the other end of the phone and expecting to know when and how often they got distracted.
• Cons
  • The participant might feel embarrassed about the number of times they have been getting distracted and stop letting us know about it. 
  • The participant needs to open a text messaging app to send us a text, which can lead to further distraction if they see new messages there.

Idea 3: Ask the participants to stick a sticky note on the screen of the phone to remind them to do a task (written on the note) before they’re allowed to use their phone

• How Our Research Led To This Idea
  • In our primary research, some of the participants discussed having set up physical barriers between themselves and the phone in the past, and how that helped them use the phone less. 
  • In our secondary research, we learned that physical barriers can be very effective in stopping people from engaging in mindless behavior because the extra effort might not seem to be worth it for them.
• Pros
  • The sticky note directly blocking part of the phone screen is a physically unavoidable obstacle that the participant has to remove before using the phone, so the nudge for the participant to stay away from their phone is very clear and impossible to miss.
  • Having the name of an activity/task the participant should complete before they’re allowed to use their phone serves as a reminder for what to do, so the participant doesn’t have to make a decision about what to do to fight the urge to use their phone in the moment
• Cons
  • Some participants might need to access their phone intentionally in order to complete some part of their morning routine, so the sticky note would be an inconvenience in that case
  • If the participants have to temporarily move the sticky note to use their phone for a planned task, they have to remember to place the sticky note back on the phone screen afterwards

Below  is a 2×2 grid with all of our intervention ideas mapped on a vertical axis of effectiveness and a horizontal axis of feasibility. The top three ideas discussed above are in green.

With the pros and cons of each of the top 3 ideas as well as their feasibility and effectiveness in mind, we finally selected the third idea – use sticky notes as physical barriers on the phone to prevent distractions – as our final winner. This idea scores high on effectiveness because it is a physical and unavoidable obstacle in between participants and their phones, whereas the other ideas rely on the participants to internally pay attention to whether they are about to be distracted. This idea also scores high on feasibility because post-it notes are common household items and sticking them on the phone is also a mentally and physically simple task for participants.

Intervention Study Protocol

To improve our top idea from the ideation process and get ready to start the intervention study, we fleshed out the idea as well as added additional components to it.

Here is a detailed plan for the study:

• Intervention Method

• • Ask participants to write down their planned morning routine tasks on post-it notes and place the stack on their phone. As they complete each task, they may peel off the corresponding sticky note.

• What we’ll ask of the participants

• • The night before, write on each post-it note with the name of one of the tasks they plan to do as part of their morning routine, and then stick the notes (stacked in the order the tasks should be done) on the phone before going to bed.
  • Write a tally mark on the current post-it note every time they go on their phone, or perform an unintended action on the phone, and get distracted from the current task.
  • Once all tasks are completed, send us a picture of all the post-its from the morning, along with answers to a series of questions in this google form at the earliest convenience.
  • Repeat the process for a total of 5 weekdays

• Key questions to address

• • How well does the physical barrier posed by the sticky notes serve to keep participants from reaching for their phone mindlessly and/or take unintended actions on the phone outside of their planned routine?
  • How much does having the morning routine tasks written on the post-it notes help the participants follow through with their plan for the morning?

• Who to recruit

• • Baseline participants who face challenges with distractions in their morning routines, and provided us consistent data during the baseline study
  • Students and new grads (our initial target audience) who wish to eliminate or reduce distractions in their morning routine

Here’s a photo of completed sticky notes we’ll provide the participants as an example: