Attention Enhancing Technology: A New Dimension in the Design of Effective Wellbeing Apps

Excessive phone use negatively impacts mental health and productivity. However, moderating phone usage is difficult because a deep understanding of the psychology of habit-forming and attention-grabbing has been deliberately exploited in design. Consequently, wellbeing applications (apps) which are not themselves grounded in behavioral science are unable to address problematic phone use effectively. In this article, we propose a set of design principles for wellbeing apps that brings together elements of value-sensitive design from interaction design and behavioral models from psychology. We describe the design of a wellbeing app according to these principles, its implementation, and its evaluation. The results show that our app can support users in controlling their phone use, but moreover, the design principles point the way toward attention-enhancing technology that can be used for habit-breaking, rehabilitation, and self-protection.

I. Introduction

The advent of mobile phones has changed our society in unforeseen ways. Smartphone users in the U.S. spend on average 3 h a day on their phone [1]. Since 2015, excessive smartphone use has been considered a public health concern by the World Health Organization (WHO). In a survey conducted with 70 students at Imperial College London, we found that over 70% of the student participants strongly expressed the desire to reduce their phone consumption, with only 7.5% responding that they did not want to change their phone activity.