TimeIt: Helping You Reduce Scrolling

Lavender Chen, Yubin Jee, Julia Kadie, Alex Lee, Amber Patrick

CS247B: Design for Behavior Change, Winter 2023

0. Introduction

TimeIt is an app to help college students limit their amount of screen time on TikTok, a social media platform with an “endless scrolling” short-form content structure. We aim to do this by allowing users to determine their personal screentime goals and designate a friend who they trust to monitor their TikTok usage. Once they meet their time limit, they are able to request more time from this friend, who then has the choice to either accept or reject the request. Users are able to see the number of requests they made per week as a recurring statistic to visualize their progress. Our team worked on this project from January to March 2023.

Note: despite resizing images in wordpress, some images still appear huge on this published blog post. For a slightly more readable experience, see our Google Doc. 

1. The Challenge

Why Tiktok?

In recent years, TikTok has influenced how our generation dresses, communicates with each other, and most importantly, how we interact with our phone. In fact, TikTok boasts 113+ million monthly active users aged 18 and above in the US alone, meaning that 1-in-3 adults have a TikTok account. However, due to its addictive UI features and patterns, TikTok has unfortunately introduced a number of unhealthy behaviors that are common among our generation. Simply put, many people cannot stop using the app for hours on end.

Because of its growing influence and concerning behavioral impacts on our personal lives and our friends and family’s lives, our team was interested in exploring how we can break these addictive patterns and prevent TikTok’s negative impacts on sleep and academic performance. We aim to utilize this project as an avenue for better understanding what exactly goes into the addictive nature of TikTok usage.

What do we know already?

Through our extensive literature review and comparative analysis, we were able to better understand the various factors that lead to TikTok addiction, the consequences of such addictions, and the various interventions on the market that can help TikTok users curb their daily use.

Literature review: (click for more comprehensive research)

To start, our literature review has showed us that there are 3 factors that lead to TikTok addiction:

1. Social self-presentation: Rewarding feelings of group identification and inclusivity
2. Trendiness: TikTok is seen as an exciting and novel new app used by many others
3. Escapist addiction: Users use the app to escape from their everyday responsibilities

These three factors coupled with the fact that TikTok is insanely effective at prolonging user stay by microtargeting user interests through an incredibly adaptive algorithm increases the risk of addiction to the platform. To make things worse, TikTok’s “infinite scroll” UI makes each user session incredibly long due to the minimal effort required for new personalized content.

Image above is a diagram explaining the overall flow of a social media platform 

After TikTok users become addicted, they experience critical real-world consequences in the form of lack of sleep due to pre-sleep cognitive arousal. However, due to the generally high satisfaction that users have with TikTok content, it seems that many users would prefer a non-invasive solution to TikTok addiction due to the overall positive interaction that they have with the platform.

To counter these effects, research suggests that solutions need to break users’ concentration on TikTok’s content in one way or another and needs to combat characteristics like “fear of missing out” and variable rewards. Other user initiated solutions such as removing notifications or introducing logging in with each use can be effective at reducing TikTok usage.

Comparative Analysis:

We broke our competitors down into a plot that utilizes the x-axis as a measure of sociality and the y-axis as a measure of the amount of impact that it has on the user experience:

We noticed that many existing solutions focused on low-impact / individual approaches, which may explain the ineffectiveness of solutions such as Apple’s screen-time feature. However, the high-impact solutions seemed a bit too intrusive or extreme to develop as long-lasting solutions to the problem. Therefore, we felt that there was an opportunity for an app with moderate impact on a social and individual level, which is where we decided to explore.

Baseline Study

As a team, we decided to research TikTok users that consume more content than they create and are between the ages of 17-25. This focus was informed by TikTok’s prevalence amongst younger generations and TikTok’s relevance to our friends and personal interests, which is where the inspiration for our idea had originated. To set up the study, we screened our interviewees and interviewed them to learn more about why they use TikTok and their initial TikTok behavior (screening questions and more). Through our baseline study (more comprehensive details in link), we wanted to focus on exploring our target audience’s TikTok usage patterns by asking them questions through a daily Google Form such as when they used TikTok most often in the day or why they used TikTok during certain hours (entire survey can be found here).

After synthesizing the results through affinity chunking, frequency mapping, and graphing on a x-y axis, we were able to pull a number of key takeaways:

• Most users have a generally positive experience with the app and don’t hold negative sentiment despite troubling usage patterns
• Users often had unproductive sessions due to uncontrolled TikTok usage, which led to the most common negative aspect of TikTok usage (reduced productivity)
• The two categories with the largest variation was sentiment towards TikTok as well as usage patterns

This shifted our perspective on our problem statement, where emphasis went from objectively cutting down time on TikTok to ensuring that users moderate usage in a way that still gives them enjoyment.

Personas & Journey Maps

After the baseline study, we established an empathy map that mapped the process of opening, using, and closing TikTok to the classic categories of feel, do, think, and say. This process was particularly illustrative in producing key insights such as:

• Many users sought mediums of entertainment from work or class while being alone, which often led to opening TikTok
• Users often only self-regulated their use once an extreme time limit was used
• Positive sentiment around the app was primarily associated with social aspects such as coordinating a dance with friends or sending each other TikToks 

After exploring these insights through more causal-relationship diagrams that can be found here, we noticed that there was a strong negative correlation between TikTok usage and sleep quality, loneliness, as well as unintentional usage patterns.

Example of causal-relationship diagram explored in process

With this in mind, we were able to synthesize three different personas that were varied based on how much they used TikTok, when they liked to use TikTok, and their motivations for why they didn’t like their current usage patterns: (more detail on each persona here)

1. Flip-Flopping Fiona: the type of user who distinctly uses the app most when they wake up and before they go to sleep, which ends up ruining their sleep schedule and overall energy levels:

2. Everything in Moderation Emma: the type to utilize TikTok as a replacement for social interaction and ends up isolating themselves:

3. Decreasing Desires Daisy: the type who mindlessly scrolls on TikTok habitually throughout the day and wants to be much more intentional about their usage:

2. Solution Finding

Intervention Study

Our intervention study lasted for one week targeted to test whether or not a reminder to finish up your work would motivate users to stop using TikTok. In our ideation process, we considered 3 main ideas which were: 1) Duo Push a friend to approve you for using TikTok, 2) Timer while using TikTok to see how much time has elapsed, and 3) Show a to-do list/user’s google calendar when you open TikTok or have been using it for a while.  We created a pros and cons list for each and decided with the 3rd option because it was most realistic to implement using shortcuts on Apple devices and because in our user research, we learned that a tool to break concentration using TikTok is effective and one of the strongest ways to do that is by reminding them of their priorities.

Our main research question during the study was if users would stop using TikTok when reminded of their unfinished “to-do” tasks. The goal was that the consistent reminder of “to-do” tasks will help daily users of TikTok break out of the causal loop and reduce their daily usage, particularly before they go to sleep. Our hypothesis was that they would be motivated to stop using TikTok if they constantly see the reminders every time they open the app. To test this hypothesis, we set up a shortcut on users’ phones which would display a reminder to open up the calendar app every time the user opened TikTok. We then sent users a daily survey to complete the beginning of every day for a week, which judged their TikTok usage on a quantitative level by tracking phone screen time, and a qualitative level by tracking how users felt about the impact of the intervention.

In creating this intervention idea, our team used a series of conceptual models to determine our target user profile for this app. One key insight we realized during this process was the repetitive cycle of lack of sleep as a result of mindless scrolling which led to diminished productivity the next day. We also recognized another causal loop from being bored, mindlessly opening TikTok, and a  desire to stop their mindless scrolling during usage. These conceptual models demonstrated a commonality between users in 1) what motivates them to open TikTok in the first place and 2) a desire to stop using TikTok while they’re mindlessly scrolling through it.

Causal Loops:

Finally, we conducted a final synthesis model between the relationship of TikTok usage and socializing, since we realized that our users often attributed the two as a cause-and-effect relationship.

Connection Circle:

From this model, we realized three key insights:

1. We found that there was a strong connection between certain users’ Tiktok usage and their sleep quality, which inevitably affected their daily lives. This seemed to be a great area for us to start exploring and create an intervention.
2. We also saw that certain Tiktok usage patterns were rooted in negative emotions and only seemed to reinforce these negative feelings over and over again and promoted loneliness.
3. Lastly, we saw that there seemed to be a high number of unintentional, habitual usage patterns of Tiktok where the users simply opened Tiktok because they were bored or wanted to “fill in the void” as opposed to intentionally wanting to go on Tiktok for specific content.

From here on, we created three main user personas: 1) Flip-flopping Fiona who is a habitual TikTok user usually before going to bed and first thing in the morning, 2) Decreasing Desires Daisy who struggles with her TikTok addiction even though she recognizes it as a mindless activity and wants to stop using it completely, and 3) Everything in Moderation Emma who believes her daily usage of TikTok is not a problem since it is mostly used for relaxation although her social interactions have significantly decreased as a result of TikTok use.

Ultimately, for the intervention study, we decided to narrow down our users profile to “Flip-flopping Fiona”, since we felt that this persona represented the majority of our users from our baseline study which also presents us with the most viable problem-space to solve.

Our intervention was strongly backed up by user research and competitive analysis in which we determined the strengths and weaknesses of all our competitors (such as ScreenZen, One Sec, etc.) and decided on our current intervention that would effectively allow users to hold themselves accountable for their usage and nudge them to stop using TikTok without intervening too strongly.

Design Architecture

To design our solution, we went through a series of mapping to determine user flow of our app. From story mapping, we gained some new insights about how different solutions may be effective for different types of users.

Our process of story mapping helped us narrow down three main ideas for our solution:

1. Laying iPads throughout campus and having friends watch TikToks together in specific locations to encourage more social interaction.
2. Notification that asks a user’s friend if they have permission to keep watching TikTok to help hold users accountable for reaching their screen time limit.
3. A scoreboard that tracks how many minutes friends spent on TikTok and having the person that spent the most minutes buy coffee which would encourage users to use the app less to avoid having to pay.

Bubble mapping helped us determine the exact screens we needed on our app, as well as which were excess and which should be part of the minimum viable product (MVP) we needed to create by the end of the quarter. Below is an image of our team’s combined bubble map after synthesizing the most necessary screens on each of our individual bubble maps.

Finally, in our system path diagram, we were able to determine the exact flow of our app and which screens should be connected together to create a cohesive and intuitive flow.

 

Out of these three maps, the most useful for our team was the bubble map, since it really forced us to flesh out the exact screens needed to create our app, and made the entire design more concrete instead of how abstract it was during our ideation and testing process.

Assumption Mapping and Testing

After we conducted our intervention testing, we determined that a simple notification/reminder to finish your tasks wasn’t effective enough to make someone stop using TikTok. Therefore, we switched gears to carry out another one of our previous solutions, which was implementing a notification that asks the user’s friend to extend their TikTok screen time limit. To carry out this solution, we had to test two main assumptions: 1) Users could limit their own screen time by setting realistic goals and 2) Users would be positively influenced to stop using TikTok if notified by a friend to quit. We collected this information and synthesized it in an assumption map below:

To test the first assumption, we created a week-long study where we had two groups of users, one where a user had enforced screen time limits by us and one where the user could set their own screen time limits. We sent them a daily assumption study that collected quantitative information about their phone screen time per day, as well as qualitative information about how they felt the study affected their TikTok usage each day. To test the second assumption, we created another week-long study that split our users into two groups: one where users had to text a friend after they received an alert that they had surpassed their screen time limit that day, and one where users only received the alert and did nothing else. For this study as well, we sent the same daily assumption study as described above.

The major insight we gained from the first study was that although users of the enforced screen time limit group did use TikTok less overall compared to the user group with self-enforced time limits, users of the enforced group described fear as the main factor that limited their screen time usage which was not the vibe we wanted to go for with our app. Despite this key insight, we noticed that screen time on TikTok still did decrease overall for users of our self-determined time limit group although it was less than the first group. However, if we had the chance to do our assumption testing again, we would make sure to emphasize to our users that they should try to choose screen time limits that would challenge them to decrease their usage as this could further change the results of the self-enforced screen time limit group which we observed in our testing.

The major insight we gained from our second assumption test was that both groups of users appreciated having a timer as a reminder while using TikTok, but that screen time decreased more significantly for the group that had to text their friends if they reached their limit for the day. One user attributed this finding as a cause of worrying that they would disrupt their friend if they had to text them after overusing TikTok, so they just naturally diminished their usage to avoid that. This test validated our hypothesis that having a friend hold you accountable for using TikTok had a stronger effect to nudge users to quit the app. To avoid making the app too controlling and harsh on the user, we also decided to let users enforce their own screen time limit but emphasize to them the importance of setting realistic goals that would challenge them to decrease their usage in the long run.

For the most part, both hypotheses of our assumption tests were validated which is why we went forth with our final idea which combined both tests so that users could choose their own screen time limits for the week as well as a friend they trusted to hold them accountable for their screen usage. To be explicit, the assumptions which remained after our testing were 1) users could customize their screen limits to their preference and hold themselves accountable to it, and 2) having a designated friend in charge of overseeing the users’ screen time on TikTok would nudge users to use the app less overall.

3. Building a Solution

From our solution finding, we identified the ideal characteristics that our solution should emulate and narrowed on a mobile application as the optimal vessel to deliver these characteristics. This was done by examining the conclusions for our various mapping strategis. From our bubble mapping process, we identified the exact screens that were critical to executing our main task of sending extension requests to a friend once the daily time limit for TikTok expired. This was essential to the foundation of our MVP.

From our assumption mapping process, we were able to run two assumption tests that significantly contributed to building our solution. Our insight from the first study (enforcing a screen limit versus allowing users to input their own limit) solidified the decision to allow for users to input their own daily time limits for TikTok usage. Tying this back to our literature review and competitive analysis, we wanted to emphasize positive intrinsic motivation rather than fear as the primary rationale for users to engage with our app. Thus, a screen that facilitates easy input of daily screen time limits was essential. Our insight from the second study (doing nothing once TikTok usage time elapsed versus having to text a friend) also contributed to our final solution. Because we saw that TikTok usage significantly decreased when alerting a friend was required, we moved forward with our idea to include a member of the user’s network in the extension request process.

With these initial steps as our foundation, we identified the key aspects of our MVP: 1) adding a friend, 2) setting individual time limits for allowed TikTok usage, and 3) requesting an extension from a friend when the time limit is reached. These features address the gaps we found in our competitive analysis, where a solution that balanced intrinsic and extrinsic motivations was missing. Empowering users with the ability to set their own time limits rather than shaming them for usage at all was a critical tenet when addressing this gap. Importantly, this also addressed commonalities (e.g., desire to use TikTok when needed, but not excessively) amongst our three personas. This allowed for the creation of a first draft of what our solution would look like, beginning the iteration process.

Wireflows to sketchy screens

As a team, we discussed our learnings from solution finding to identify key milestones in our happy path. Our happy path traced back to a user who wanted to decrease their TikTok usage. First, they would set limits on the amount of time they could spend on the app daily. To help with accountability as they work towards their goal, users would designate a friend to track their progress. This would come in the form of notifications to the friend when a user wants to exceed their time limit. To keep a user informed of their progress towards their goal of decreasing TikTok usage, users would view relevant metrics on the app. This path was condensed into 1) adding a friend, 2) setting screen limits for TikTok, 3) requesting an extension from the added friend, and 4) viewing statistics related to the app such as the number of extension requests and total time spent on TikTok.

After outlining the steps necessary for these tasks, we created screens to correspond to each step. Next, we filled in the gaps between screens to determine what was necessary for our first draft. Some of the screens we filled in included account creation screens and screens to indicate a transition or change to the user.  With this in mind, we created our sketchy screens in Balsamiq (see our full write up here).

Login setup

Forgot password

Add a friend + input time limits

Home screen

Extension responses

Requesting an extension

While our UI decisions are fully elucidated in our full write up, we generally aimed to uphold characteristics like simplicity, clarity, and utility throughout this process. One potential challenge that came up was how intuitive it is for users to modify their time limit for each day. We received feedback on this consideration during our usability testing. Another challenge that we considered was how to best integrate TikTok screens, and other general redirection components, into our prototype. For example, weighing whether our app should be an intermediary before all TikTok usage or only in instances where a user’s time limit has expired. Again, as usability testing progressed, we were able to determine the best method of integration. We also considered the best way to incorporate friends into our app in terms of numbers. While having more friends is appealing as there are most points of contact to request time extensions from, having only one friend would increase accountability (e.g., can’t disperse requests across a network). Our conclusion on this challenge was also reached during usability testing.

Branding — Mood Boards & Style Tiles

With our sketchy screens in place, we moved on designing the mood boards and style tiles for our solution. After reviewing inspiration from magazines and apps that serve a similar function, we created a persona for our app. TimeIT would embody “cat energy,” which entails encouraging but firm reminders to follow the outlined time limits. Just like a cat, the reminders would be simultaneously insistent and welcome. Users, while potentially experiencing some frustration from the interruption, would ultimately appreciate the consistent nudges towards achieving their self imagined goal. Details on how we combined our individual perspectives into our final version can be found in our full write up, however we prioritized converging on a solution that matched our app’s imagined personality.

Usability Testing

With both our sketchy screens and style tile completed, we moved towards the step of combining the two for our usability testing. We created a medium fidelity prototype in Figma, a tool that supports both design and interactivity. After designing our prototype, we conducted usability testing (see our write up for the detailed procedure and Section 4: Prototype for our full prototype) to evaluate our design. During our testing, we asked users to complete 4 tasks. Our first task was for users to add a friend to the app. Next, users were asked to set a screen time limit. Following this, we requested that users request a screentime extension from their friend. Finally, we had users use our app to check their TikTok usage statistics.

From this process, we identified the 7 changes below that had to be made to our prototype, with the major 3 issues noted below as “- Major”.  

Issue 1 – Major

When prompted with the option to ask their friends for more time on TikTok (extension request), they didn’t know how much more time they were requesting, or whether they even had the choice to select how much more time.

Severity: Severe

Fix: Each extension request will be 15 minutes. We will make this clear on the “Ask for extension” time, so users understand that they are asking for 15 minutes extensions.

Change in Figma:  Rephrase the question from “Request for an extension? “ to “ Request 15 more minutes?” on the extension request page. Rephrase the alert users receive when their request has been accepted from “Your friend accepted your request for an extension!” to “Your friend accepted your request! Unlocking for the next 15 minutes….”

Issue 2

When prompted to “Add a friend,” users were unsure if this meant that they could only add one friend and they would be unable to add more friends or change their friend to other friends.

Severity: Moderate

Fix: We will update the add friend screen so it is clear you can only add one friend, and you are fixed on that friend once they are  chosen – no option for adding more friends/changing them.

Change in Figma:  Change “Add a Friend” to “Add TimeIt Buddy” to better indicate that there is only one person who extension requests are sent to. Also, a brief description of what a TimeIt buddy is and considerations for how they should be selected (also supports conclusion from ethics conversation on how to prevent abuse of the solution): “You only get one TimeIt Buddy! Pick a consistent friend who wants to help you reach your goals.”

Issue 3 – Major

Some of our testers were confused if the process of adding a friend was one that they would need to repeat every time they logged in.

Severity: Severe

Fix: Overall, our onboarding process doesn’t have very much description, explaining how each of these decisions during the onboarding affects their daily usage of the app. Therefore, we can easily fix this by clarifying how the friend addition process would be a one-time setup through textual description, this would easily fix this design confusion.

Change in Figma: resolved with the fix to issue 2

Issue 4 – Major

On the home screen of the app, our users see two bar charts: one showing screentime and one showing requests. These metrics have different units, so it is unclear why they are presented on the same type of bar chart graph.

Severity: Moderate

Fix: To fix this, we will keep the overall screen time as the bar chart that it currently is and we will change the number of requests to be a line graph mapping requests throughout the week.

Change in Figma: Changed the bar graph to line graph so that it better illustrates the change over time in the number of requests.

Issue 5

At the home screen, users were confused why the friend’s name was at the top rather than their own.

Severity: Severe

Fix: We can add a header/label clarifying that this is your chosen friend rather than simply displaying the friend name.

Change in Figma: Encapsulate the friend info into a single section and add a descriptive header, explaining that this represents the friend that you’ve chosen.

Issue 6

Users didn’t know when to log in with the Facebook, Google, and Apple login buttons/ if they had to log in again through each of these avenues after pressing login/create an account.

Severity: Trivial

Fix: Add Facebook, google, apple login buttons on the login/create an account screen on the first page of the onboarding.

Change in Figma: Only added the facebook/google/apple login buttons on the very first screen with the login/create an account button to avoid repeat actions to login/create an account through these avenues for users.

Issue 7

Daily time limit screen was hard to navigate since users weren’t sure whether to click the “Tap to Edit” instruction at the top and also wanted an easier option to set the same time limit for everyday.

Severity:  Moderate

Fix: Get rid of the question mark symbol next to “Tap to Edit” to avoid confusion/add an “all of the above” option to set the same time limit everyday.

Change in Figma: Got rid of the question mark sign next to “Tap to Edit” because it was intuitive enough without an explanation. Also added a “Set same time everyday” option at the bottom of the screen to easily adjust the time everyday.

If we were to move forward, we would consider expanding some of the features that we currently have, like the metrics found on the homepage. Integrating encouraging features like streaks would enhance how users interact with our app while further motivating users to adhere to their time limits. Additionally, from one of our earlier studies, we learned that actively displaying the time that has elapsed while on TikTok can serve as another means of encouragement. Including this as a feature would compound on the efforts inherent in the timer feature to help users stick to their goal.

4. Clickable Prototype

Link: https://www.figma.com/file/e68kbmODy0BpzzchsorfO8/Clickable-Prototype?node-id=0%3A1&t=jYiGJhX0osSh2CmN-1

In our prototype, we implemented 3 core flows: onboarding (login, inputting screentime limits, adding a friend), requesting an extension, and responding to the friend’s acceptance/rejection of the request. We also designed the home screen to visually represent two core metrics: daily TikTok usage in the form of a bar graph, and the daily number of extension requests in a line graph. The home screen also reflects the current status of their TikTok limit if their limit is reached, indicating that TikTok is locked for the day.

For our onboarding flow, we bring the user through a sign up/login flow and then prompt them with questions to get to know them better and find out what goals they have with the app. After the onboarding screen, the users are taken to the “home” screen which will be our friends list screen; the first screen in our tab navigator. We wanted to keep our onboarding flow as simple and intuitive as possible, hence why we chose to only include two core features – adding a TimeIt buddy and setting screentime limit goals, aside from logging in/creating an account. On the homepage of our app, users are able to see the status of their TikTok usage request, daily usage patterns, and the number of times they have requested an extension for TikTok throughout the week. The goal is for this to be the center of everything TimeIt-related, so that users can easily keep track of how well they’re minimizing their TikTok usage.

For our “hitting time limit” flow, users go through the process of asking their friend for a screentime extension if they choose to, or closing out of the app. If the friend accepts the extension request, the user goes through the request accepted flow, as shown above. The friend goes through a separate flow where they get notified from our app, which is invisible to the user, shown below.

However, if the friend denies the extension request, the user goes through the “request denied” flow, where they have the choice to close out of the app or text their friend. We believed that giving our user the choice to text their friend about the denied request would allow them more agency, in case the friend changes their mind or if the denial was accidental. However, we hoped that this extra step to unlocking TikTok would be effective in steering our users towards closing the application.

If our user chooses “close app” or their friend does not approve their request after texting them, the home screen is updated to reflect this status with the header: “TikTok Limit Reached.” We decided that updating the home screen would be a straightforward visual reminder to show our users that their TikTok limit has been reached for the day, in case they forget throughout the rest of the day.

5. Ethics Review

Throughout our project, we grappled with many ethical issues.

Broader Impact of Product

Our product’s goals are, at a high level, beneficial to society because we attempt to reduce usage of TikTok overuse, a harmful behavior. Indeed, while users enjoy TikTok use in moderate doses, overusing TikTok has adverse effects: it creates an addiction-like dependency and it negatively impacts sleep and mental health. Our app focuses on college-age students because TikTok’s user base is primarily young people, with users aged 10-19 making up 32% of users and age 20-29 making up 30-39% of users. Given TikTok’s young user base, it is of the utmost importance to break TikTok addiction during formative years, as youth have been shown to be more susceptible to harms associated with social media use discussed above. As such, TimeIt acts in the best interest of society to reduce the negative impact of TikTok on its users by reducing overuse of TikTok. TimeIt empowers users to have more accountability with their screen time reduction goals.

TimeIt as an example of ethical nudging

Our app nudges users not to extend their screen time on TikTok through the friend approval process. We make it more difficult than usual to extend screen time because our users will feel guilty for annoying their friends with extension requests. In addition, our UI has intentional design nudges, such as “No” being the default answer to the extension question, to discourage users from trying to extend their time on the app.

During our design process, we deeply considered whether these nudges were ethical. Guided by the principles provided in Wilkinson’s “Nudging and Manipulation”, we argue that our nudges are ethical because they are consensual. Our users consented to these nudges by downloading our app, adding their friend, and giving our app permission to control their TikTok usage. Though we do manipulate users to decrease their TikTok screen time, we do so with their consent and thus, do not violate a user’s autonomy.

Privacy Considerations

In our app, our users consent to be limited by their friend’s approval of screen time extension requests. Therefore, they give up some level of autonomy and privacy because their friend can both control and see the user’s TikTok screen time when asked to approve a screen time extension. In “Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have Nothing to Hide”, Solove argues that privacy is a fundamental right that supports personal autonomy and that it protects against misuse of personal information and fosters innovation.

We will combat these reductions of personal privacy by ensuring that we provide as limited information as possible to our user’s friend regarding their screen time and ensure that their personal data is stored as safely as possible. Moreover, in general, we expect that users will have autonomy to choose their accountability friend.

However, there are specific cases where this violation of user autonomy and privacy can lead to more harm than good. For instance, one example we had considered deals with an abusive spouse using our app to control their partner’s TikTok usage. To combat this concern, our final product design will have a fail safe in which a user can override their friend’s disapproval of requests for TikTok usage. Thus, despite users inevitably giving up some level of personal privacy by consenting to use our app, we are cognizant of this and resolve these concerns by minimizing the privacy loss necessary for use of TimeIt and combat certain autonomy issues by allowing users to override their friend’s control.

Design Justice in TimeIt’s UX

We recognize that, throughout the design process for TimeIt, we tested only on college students in the United States. This leaves out international users, who may be used to different default user experiences. It is important to recognize from a design justice perspective that our design is not “optimal” for all users. Thus, if we were to launch this product across different countries or regions, it would be necessary to reconsider our design choices to be inclusive of our new users. As discussed in the book “Design Values: Hard-Coding Liberation?”, without this prioritization, we would be placing a higher “cognitive load” on those users by implicitly making our app harder for them to use.

6. Conclusion

As a group, we realized that there are many more elements to behavior change than we had expected. However, as a team of five, we were able to brainstorm different ideas on different scopes, including what behavior to target, potential solutions, mood board, and the look & feel of our prototype. Specifically, because all five of us fit the overarching user persona our app targeted, we were able to utilize our own personal experiences to help formulate our design solution. If we had more time to continue working on our project, we would work towards building out simplified features, such as: allowing users to customize the length of their extension requests instead of fixating at 15 minute intervals and allowing users to add multiple friends and rotate whenever desired. We would also like to investigate the effectiveness of the graphs displayed on our home screen and see whether there are other metrics that users would prefer seeing, or other ways the data could be better depicted. After 247B, we will approach our next behavior design efforts more methodically and thoroughly: from diary studies to intervention studies to assumption testing to usability testing. Throughout these steps, we intend to also be mindful of ethical and accessibility concerns as well. Thank you so much to Christina and the wonderful teaching staff for providing guidance, encouragement, and expertise throughout this class.