Behavioral Persona: Isabella, a college student
My behavioral persona that I chose to focus on is Isabella, a junior in college who enjoys and is active on various social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. She is tech-savvy, and enjoys spending time on these apps as it helps her pass time, is entertaining, and often helps her connect with her friends and social circle. However, she often notices herself spending an excessive amount of time on TikTok compared to other platforms, as she finds TikTok the most entertaining and addicting. She is spending time on the app before she goes to sleep and right when she wakes up, which is affecting the quality of her rest and her levels of productivity – she wants to control this behavior, but setting time limits on her iPhone doesn’t help since she is too tempted to ignore the limit, and there are no negative consequences of this action. She also feels that there is no one to keep her accountable but herself, hence making it that much more difficult to stay off the app.
| Name of persona: Isabella | Project
CS 247B |
Team name/individual name:
Team 1: Yubin Jee |
 |
Role: | College student |
| Goal | Use TikTok less – while working & before going to bed | |
| Motivation | I want to use TikTok less because I want my study/work sessions to be more productive without frequent distractions. I also want to use it less before going to bed because it affects how much sleep I get. | |
| Conflict | It’s difficult to keep myself accountable because the negative consequences of continuing to use TikTok aren’t super bad – also, since all my friends use TikTok, I’m also more inclined to stay on it. The app is also just addicting in general. | |
| Attempts to Solve | I’ve tried to put screen time limits on TikTok, but I end up ignoring it and staying on the app – it’s not too useful. | |
| Setting/ Environment | I’m trying to solve the problem on my phone – where the app is native to. Physical location-wise, I’m trying to solve it in my room, where I do most of my work and get rest. | |
| Tools | I have an iPhone, so I can use Apple’s native screentime limit feature. I can also download any apps that are available on App Store that might help with lessening my usage/ | |
| Skills | Some skills that I have are writing, baking, and playing the violin. | |
| Routines | I wake up at 9 almost every day, and scroll on TikTok for the first 15 minutes. I usually do homework at night, from 7PM-12AM. During this work session, I typically go on TikTok every 15-20 minutes or so. I usually goto bed around 1 or 2AM, and before I fall asleep I scroll on TikTok for 30 or so minutes. | |
| Habits | Some habits that I have include: going on my phone before/after sleep, eating breakfast, drinking soda with my meals |
Journey Map: baseline study
I tracked the actions, thoughts, interactions, emotion levels (positive to negative), as well as potential solutions based on the 5 days of the study that our interviewees participated in. Overall, my interviewee’s interaction on TikTok fluctuated dramatically (from spending 0 minutes on the app to spending ~40 minutes); what’s interesting though, is that the time spent on app isn’t necessarily the only correlating factor to the emotions of the user. How they interacted with the app also affected their emotional state, as my interviewee found texts messages between her and her friend about a TikTok was overall very positive.
