Comparative Research

Comparative Analysis 

Overview:

We have identified ten apps that help reduce screen time and/or encourage people to go out and do other activities. Among all of them, we noticed patterns such as locking users out of certain apps and block website with passwords. We have also noticed that many of these apps also help prevent other bad habits in general. The primary themes involve focus and meditation as oppose to encourage new activities. They are also goal-setting centric.

One Sec

1. 1. Description: This app prompts users to take a deep breath whenever they open one of the configured websites (ranging from Instagram and YouTube to Twitter and Reddit). The goal is to help users be more mindful of their social media use so that they don’t engage in mindless screen time.
   2. Target Users: People likely adolescent-age and up who wish to exercise more agency over their mobile phone screen time.
   3. Strengths: Tracks app use habits over time, suggests healthy replacement activities,  notifies users when they’ve spent too long scrolling, works with many kinds of apps (even dating apps, news, video games, etc.), and allows users to customize the mindfulness exercise that delays the app (like rotating their phone or following a moving dot if they prefer an alternative to the deep breath).
   4. Weaknesses: Requires a $15 subscription per year, doesn’t support every app or  website, spams users with upgrade requests, and requires a tedious configuration process.
   5. How will our product/idea improve experience?  Our product could offer an experience that is easily configurable to all apps/websites rather than a predetermined selection.

ScreenZen 

1. 1. Description:  ScreenZen gamifies the process of lowering your screen time. It prompts users to pause and reflect on whether or not they truly want to open an app like Instagram before the page fully loads.  In addition, users have access to detailed screen time data that tracks their progress over time (alongside steps walked and hours slept). The app also provides small tips regarding phone use such as encouraging you to delete apps that you don’t use.
   2. Target Users: Adolescents and older who wish to do “more living” and less scrolling on their mobile devices.
   3. Strengths: Strikes a good balance between allowing users to be on distracting apps and mindfully limiting their use, allows users to customize prompts such as “is this for business?”, has  time delays that prompt adequate reflection (30 seconds), allows customization of time delays, and doesn’t spam users with ads.
   4. Weaknesses: The app doesn’t work for website use (only apps), it has a confusing setup process, only allows users to block certain apps (not any games, for example).
   5. How will our product/idea improve experience? Our product could offer an experience that is easily configurable to all apps/websites rather than a predetermined selection.
   6. Screenshot/photo of app

Focus Lock 

1. 1. 1. Description: An app locking app that helps users forcefully limit app usage by applying either a light or full lock on specific apps. However, default apps (for iOS, this includes iMessage, Phone, Calendar, etc.) will remain accessible. Users can sync their locking sessions to Calendar and review their session. 
      2. Target audience: Students or professionals with distracting app(s) on their iPhone.
      3. Strengths: Provides different settings of locks to help users choose their experience. Additionally provides tracking settings to sync lock sessions with the default Calendar app and sister app Flipd for detailed information. 
      4. Weaknesses: The applock targets all non-essential default apps, meaning that there is no way to specifically lock problematic apps. Furthermore, there is not a way for lock sessions to be started automatically, or last for multiple days. 
      5. How will our product/idea improve experience: A major way our idea could improve this experience would be to offer customization for screen time limiting of specific apps. 

OffScreen: Screen Time Control 

1. 1. Description: Screen time tracking and focus app for productivity sessions. Provides users with detailed screen time analytics, multiple focus modes, and an “OFF time” which can disable social apps.
   2. Target Audience: Students, with a slightly smaller focus on other individuals wanting to be more mindful of their screen time habits. iPhone users.
   3. Strengths: Provides detailed analytics about one’s screen time habits, as productivity features such as focus and a pomodoro timer, challenges for interrupting behavior (screen time, pick up, sleep), and integration with other iOS devices. 
   4. Weaknesses: App can miscategorize screen time, for example hours of having a rides share app open (as a driver), can be flagged as long screen time usage and the app will prompt users to limit the time. Additionally, it seems that the app wants location services and can drain the phone battery quickly. 
   5. How will our product/idea improve experience: One way that our idea can help to improve the experience is to provide ways for the users to choose specific apps that the screen time solution can work on and apps that the solution would not work on. 

 SPACE 

1. 1. Description: SPACE is an app designed to help users find a “phone/life balance.” It tracks time spent on your phone, the number of unlocks per day, and where phone usage occurs to give users an understanding of how much they are using their phone and where this usage occurs. The user can set daily goals for time allowance and unlock allowance. There are also features like session interrupt, screen dimming, and unlock interrupt that prompt the user to get off of their phone if they’re on too long or too frequently compared to the goals the user has set. The pro version of the app ($13.99) also allows sharing of progress, benchmark performance, and the app’s 8 Day Phone/Life Balance course, which provides actionable research and recommendations daily for adjusting phone usage.
   2. Target Audience: Phone addicts who want to reduce phone usage and are looking for an app to track screen time metrics that also provides an intervention mechanism.
   3. Strengths: Design is aesthetically pleasing, the metrics go slightly deeper than Apple’s Screen Time app through location tracking, and you can compare data to other users’.
   4. Weaknesses: The pro version is quite expensive, the app has UI issues, and it requires location tracking to function properly (I’m prompted to turn on location tracking every time I open the app). I also can’t customize session and unlock interrupt messages. There is no app-specific information, so I can’t pick and choose which apps I might want to limit time on.
   5. How will our product/idea improve experience: Our app could target specific apps. Additionally, we could focus on reducing screen time at certain times of day based on a combination of the user’s habits and when screen time is most disruptive, like at night before sleep.

NatureDose

1. 1. Description: NatureDose is a free, “personalized nature prescription app.” It tracks time spent indoors, outdoors, and exercise/movement. Users can set customized weekly targets, read daily NatureDose breakdowns (a measurement of time inside, outside, and exposed to nature), and learn their current environment’s NatureScore (the amount of nature elements within a 1 km radius). 
   2. Target audience: People looking to spend more time outdoors and in nature. Seems especially targeted at those in urban environments.
   3. Strengths: The app has straightforward, nice-looking UI, tracks NatureDose progress over time so users can compare week to week, and offers the user the chance to be a part of a scientific study through the app, which might appeal to the target audience.
   4. Weaknesses: It’s unclear how NatureDose and NatureScore are calculated, so there’s little transparency to users about why their score is what it is. It’s especially unclear about how movement data, which is required to be tracked by the app, is used. Notifications also only let the user know when they meet their NatureDose goal, so there’s no accountability for being off your phone or information about how phone usage and time outside interact.
   5. How will our product/idea improve experience: Our app could combine tracking of time spent outdoors or off of a phone with tracking of screen  time to figure out best times of day to push users to get outside or off of their phones. This could also work in conjunction with the user’s schedule app. 

iPhone screen monitoring and notification 

1. 1. Description: iPhone has an in-house screen monitoring program that tracks the apps you’ve used. Each week, it notifies users about their screen time and highlights how much their screen time changed compared to the week prior. It also has the ability lock certain app after the screen limit is reached.
   2. Target audience: iPhone users
   3. Strengths: It is built in, which reduced friction. It also has automated access in your device and automatically connects to everything under the same ID.
   4. Weaknesses: It is really easy to disable and since emergencies can arise, it allows users to continually click for more access and ignore their limits.
   5. How will our product/idea improve experience: Our app could permanently block specific apps without allowing for the app to be access at all on a mobile device. Things such as social media could be less prone to be the call in emergencies so it would make sense to truly block them. 

Forest 

1. 1. Description: Forest is a popular productivity app that helps people beat their phone addiction and manage their time in an interesting and pleasant way. This app works by letting you plant a seed and watch it grow into a virtual tree. You have to stay off of your phone for a certain time interval in order to grow a tree. If you start using social media on your phone, it causes your trees to die.
   2. Target audience:  The target audience is people who get easily distracted and are trying to stay focused.
   3. Strengths: It has a cool concept and beautiful UI. Additionally, it gets at a core motivator that motivates people to stay focused.
   4. Weaknesses: It’s a fun novelty but people get bored or sick of growing the trees after a while and then the motivator to keep them focused is gone. 
   5. How will our product/idea improve experience: Our app could find motivators that are less temporal and push our users to stop getting distracted. 

Self Control 

1. 1. Description: Self Control is an app that tries to keep you focused by eliminating your access to distractions. You can use it to block access to websites, your email server, or anything else on the internet. It works by creating a list of blacklist sites and lets you choose a set amount of time to block. You cannot access what you blocked even if you restart your computer or delete the application. 
   2. Target audience:  The target audience is people who get really easily distracted and need an extreme option that shields them from distractions.
   3. Strengths: It has a really strict escape option so you cannot access blacklisted sites in any circumstances (it is very effective at preventing distractions on your computer).
   4. Weaknesses: People will just turn to distractions on other devices. In this case, it’s only available for computer iOS so users will just turn to their phones and get distracted. The harsh skull icon is also a bit off-putting.
   5. How will our product/idea improve experience: Our idea could use a similar concept but instead of blocking sites entirely, it could distort one’s experience on such apps after a certain time to make them unappealing but not entirely blocked.

Cold Turkey  

1. 1. Description: Cold turkey is a web-app focused on blocking websites with game, media, and more during scheduled periods of time. It allows users to look ahead in their calendar and protect their screen time with passwords.
   2. Target audience:  The target audience is people who get really easily distracted.
   3. Strengths: It has the ability to block any web browser which is useful to users since many apps only touch on apps.
   4. Weaknesses: The unlock is a password which users might make themselves. This would mean that turning it off would be easy.
   5. How will our product/idea improve experience: Our idea could instead use a social key by letting a friend control the unlocking of an app as opposed to the user themselves.

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