Planet: Take A Break With A Dose of Planet
By Christian Estrella, Jasmine Chi, Maia Song, Naoto Uemura
Problem and Solution Overview:
In our digitally-driven age, the challenge of balancing screen time and personal interactions is more pressing and difficult than ever. Our solution seeks to address two key issues: the difficulty in self-motivating to reduce time spent on digital devices, particularly social media, and the struggle to maintain consistent, meaningful contact with friends outside of these digital platforms. The problem can often be seen manifesting as excessive screen time, negatively impacting personal well-being and weakening real-life social connections. Our solution hopes to enable users to encourage users to limit their screen time and facilitate face-to-face interactions that not only acts as a tool for coordinating meetups but also is a catalyst for a healthier, more balanced digital lifestyle.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants:
To conduct our research to understand the challenges associated with digital device usage and its impact on social interactions, we conducted 4 semi-structured interviews and sent out surveys through a Google form. Our interviewees included college students from diverse backgrounds so that we can capture a wide range of perspectives and device usage patterns. We chose to conduct interviews because it gives us deeper insight into the reasoning behind what our users want and need. Having them be semi-structured interviews made it so that we could adjust and add questions as needed so that the conversation flowed naturally. The choice of college students as our main target audience was strategic as well, as they represent a demographic that is often heavily reliant on digital devices for both academic and social purposes. We chose to send out surveys because it gives us an idea of what pain points and motivations the general population has. To get as many responses as possible in the short time frame, we sent out the Google forms to class Slack channels, the UW Reddit, and to people we know. The combination of these semi-structured interviews and surveys helped us learn about the current state of digital communication and device usage among college students which helped us identify key pain points and motivations and ultimately inform our design process with a diverse understanding of our users’ needs and behaviors.
Design Research Results and Themes:
Our design research, centered around digital device usage and its impact on social interactions, revealed a few common themes and insights. The majority of participants reported that they spend a significant amount of time during their day, often ranging from 6–9+ hours, engaged with digital devices with the bulk of this time being considered as non-productive from their perspective. Breaks in their device usage would typically happen every 1–2 hours but it was driven more by physician necessity such as back pain or obligatory tasks like attending classes rather than a conscious effort to disconnect. The primary activities during this screen time usage included school and working related tasks, followed closely by communication through calls, texts, and frequent usage of social media platforms such as Tiktok and Snapchat.
An important theme that we noticed is the significant value that participants place on social interactions, both digitally and in person. However, there exists a noticeable difference in the satisfaction levels regarding these interactions. While digital communication plays a huge role in these interactions, there’s a strong desire among participants for more frequent and quality in-person meetups. Yet, this desire is often overshadowed by their high screen time, indicating a gap between the preferred and actual modes of socialization.
Another interesting theme is the mixed feelings about the current frequency of hanging out with friends. Some participants expressed a desire for more in-person interactions, while others seem content with their current levels and types of social engagement. These differences highlight the need for a solution that not only encourages a reduction in screen time, but also facilitates more meaningful face-to-face interaction that is centered around individual social needs and preferences. Our design process, therefore, should try to hone in on this gap, offering a more balanced approach to digital and real-life interactions. The focus should be on creating a platform that not only encourages a reduced and more mindful screen time but also actively fosters opportunities for in-person social interactions.
Proposed Design:
Our Research showed that the main obstacle people face when trying to schedule time to spend with their friends is finding free time where everyone is free. This makes it difficult to plan events in advance, and as a result, these plans never end up happening. This causes people to spend more time alone on their digital devices, and approximately half of the survey respondents reported that they do not spend enough time with their friends. As a result, our proposed design solution is an app that will remind and encourage users to spend time off of their digital devices. There will be multiple features such as sending reminders for activity suggestions to do nearby, as well as a way for users to easily
schedule times with their friends.
To the right is a storyboard, about a user (John) experience with using our app. The design behind his experience is when the app detects the user has been scrolling away on unproductive social media, it sends him a notification prompting him to do something outside rather than staying inside on his phone. It then prompts the user with things that are nearby that he can do to appreciate the user and to have his “Dose of Planet!”
In this storyboard, we portray the experience of Evan, who experiences boredom when he is alone and seeks to spend time with his friends. Upon reaching out to them, they find that it is difficult to find a time when they are all free. Planet allows him and his friends to send their available schedules to each other, where they can choose to set recurring times to meet.
