Changing digital habits

Changing digital habits

Johannes Johansson

1 Abstract

This paper presents research findings related to the human habits of using digital devices. Through theoretical research and empirical fieldwork, it’s clarified that there is a significant concern regarding how we use digital devices and there is health implication that follow. From this baseline this paper presents an application solution designed from the methods of gamification and persuasive computing, concepts where user motivation is a core for success.

Therefore, we present a solution based on a social community because from the research and empirical work a community should be a good platform and the social interactions can provide a large amount of the motivation that has been deemed so relevant.

Table of Contents

3.2 Data tracking – Quantified Self movement... 8

3.3 Gamification ...9

3.3.1 Intrinsic & Extrinsic design ... 10

3.4 Persuasive computing ... 10 3.5 Related work ... 11 4 Methods ... 11 4.1.1 Survey ... 11 4.1.2 Prototyping ... 12 4.1.3 Usability testing ... 12 5 Design process ... 13 5.1 Survey ... 13 5.1.1 Survey outcome ... 13 5.1.2 Survey conclusions ... 15 5.2 Prototype ... 16 5.2.1 Early concepts ... 16 5.2.2 Finalized model ... 17 5.2.3 Prototype ...22 5.3 Usability test ... 26 5.3.1 Results ... 27 5.3.2 Summary ... 28

6 Discussion ... 30 7 Conclusion ...32 8 References ...34

2 Introduction

Technological advancement is relevant now more than ever, smartphones, television and computers are considered necessary appliances for most households and our daily life seems to be increasingly integrated into these devices. As these devices become more prominent the accompanying health implications becomes more relevant. In this project I will explore the relationship between users and their digital devices, how they use them and how you can design a solution that allows them to manage and control their usage. This project will be done through UCD (User-Centered design) to produce a prototype allowing the user to achieve said goals through interactive visualization of user data. The design will be based on qualitative and quantitative findings analyzed together with concepts of persuasive computing and gamification.

2.1 Research area

Addictive and excessive usage of digital devices is a conflicted area of opinions, and it appears that there are no official standards for when an individual is to be considered medically addicted to social media, games or any other digital device (Andreassen, C.S., 2015). Despite this, young people seem to be aware of their addictive behaviour and there are tools available to that aim to help users manage their behaviour. These tools do often not appear to completely meet the requirements of the users allowing for a design opportunity by identifying what motivational factors are required to make users engage with these tools and continue to use them on a regular basis.

2.2 Purpose

Generally, excessive behaviour has been something that exists in many different forms. When it comes to digital devices excessive or addictive behaviour are thoughts that come very easily. Dealing with your digital habits can be hard, especially since such a sizable portion of our lives are currently involving digital devices. When you are young you might have parents that attempt to control your habits but when you are at the age of the millennials it has become your own responsibility to make sure that your behaviour is healthy. Therefore, I believe that it’s important that we are equipped with the correct tools that allow us to work towards being in control of our own behaviour. While there are applications and tools available they appear to be focus only on reduction and not on understanding. The purpose of this project is to understand how to motivate users to not only reduce but to understand and control their behaviour.

2.3 Research question

“How do we motivate users to take charge of their digital habits through gamification and data-tracking?”

2.4 Limitations

With this project I aim to explore how users feel regarding the time spent using digital devices. While the result aims to deal with excessive behaviour the purpose is not to cure addiction but to help create awareness and motivate users to take control of their behaviour.

The prototype that will be produced will be a visual concept, an application not able to track and use real data. When this prototype is evaluated, user data will be collected manually and used for evaluating purposes. This is due to the timeframe of the project and the complexity of creating a time-tracking multiplatform application.

I will also reuse assets during the process of prototyping where there are only slight differences intended. This will mean that some wireframes might not reflect how the final design would look exactly. The reason for this is that it might not be relevant to the research question and the timeframe for the prototype might not allow for an extensive design.

Furthermore, I’ve chosen the millennial demographic as a target group for this project. This is since evaluating the differences in behaviour and opinions in relation to age I consider excessive and unnecessary. Millennials are at an age where they are at the peak of digital usage as well as capable of analysing and comprehending their own behaviour.

2.5 Demographic

Millennials or Generation Y are individuals between the ages of 18 and 38. As this is my intended target group I will aim to only have individuals from this demographic as subjects in my fieldwork. The visual concept that I will produced will also be produced with the millennial demographic as the intended target group. The reason that this is the chosen target group is that I believe that this group of individuals are active users of smartphones, computers and television while also being at an age where you are developed enough to be able to analyse what effect your habits and decisions have on your life.

As the aim of this project is to find a way to motivate people to make change it’s important that these individuals not only have the tools to do so but also have the personal capacity required to come to a conclusion that motivates you.

3 Theory

This section will feature the theory that the concepts and the research will be based upon. Relevant theory to base the concepts on are necessary to motive the design choices. This will cover both to which extent people are excessively using digital devices as well as how to motivate users into acting against this behaviour.

3.1 Addiction

This project will view excessive or addictive behaviour in relation to three different digital devices, computer, smartphone and television. Each of these devices are generally known to result in excessive usage and in most households all three devices are used daily.

3.1.1 Computer

If you refrain from including work-related usage there are two prominent activities that dominate computer usage, Web-browsing/social media and video gaming (Figure 1). Social media will be featured under “2.1.2 Smartphone”. Whether video game addiction exists is debated but excessive usage is quite common. Yee, N published a study in 2006 featuring data collected from 30,000 users of MMORPG (Massively Multi-user Online Roleplaying Games) over three years. This study displayed that the average usage was 22 hours each week and that among users aged 18-22, 48% of males and 62,2% of females perceived themselves to be addicted to the game. Considering the substantial amounts of time spent sitting down the static positioning can result in serious problems with your physical health (Blair, S. N., & Brodney, S. (1999)). There are also non-physical problems that can arise from excessive video game playing as shown in this quote by D Griffiths, M., J Kuss, D., & L King, D. (2012):

- “These include sacrificing work, education, hobbies, socializing, time with partner/family, and sleep [56-64], increased stress [56], an absence of real life relationships [65], lower psychosocial well-being and loneliness [66], poorer social skills [67,68], decreased academic achievement [28,62, 69,70], increased inattention [56,71], aggressive/oppositional behaviour and hostility [69,71], maladaptive coping [56,72,73], decreases in verbal memory performance [48], maladaptive cognitions [60], and suicidal ideation [62].”

The same article also states that the proposed treatments for video game addiction are currently too limited and most of the proposed treatments are versions of cognitive-behavioural therapy and/or self-devised interventions (by D Griffiths, M., J Kuss, D., & L King, D. (2012)).

3.1.2 Smartphone

Within smartphone usage there is one significant cause for excessive usage, social media (SURVEY). In a way like video game addiction, social media addiction is also not formally recognized (Andreassen, C.S., 2015) while still having issues with excessive usage. Cabral J presented a study featuring 313 generation Y participants where 59% perceived themselves to be addicted to Facebook. Excessive use of social media has been documented to cause mental health problems (XXXX)

Much like treating video game addiction Andreassen, CS proposes a version of cognitive-behavioural therapy as a treatment documented to have a positive effect. This treatment, “Therapeutic Interventions” is based on tracking usage and analysing it from the perspective of cognitive-behavioural therapy.

3.1.3 Television

Extensive television usage has been around since 1936 (Sussman, S. and Moran, M.B., 2013) The difference now is that we have streaming services like Netflix, HBO etc. that are rapidly increasing in popularity and they are offering a whole new way to watch television. Television suffers from the same health problems as video gaming due to physical inactivity and for treating television addiction Sussman, S. and Moran, M.B., writes this in their article:

-

A solution also relying on the collection and analysis of data.

3.2 Data tracking – Quantified Self movement

Cognitive-behavioral therapy and behavioral tracking appears to be a collective approach to treating excessive or addictive use of digital devices. Quantified self is a very popular global data tracking community that primarily involves tracking, documenting and sharing aspects of your life with the community.

With 90,187 members across 37 countries Quantified Self (QS) is a large international movement. While the most common reason for someone to join the movement is to solve a specific lifestyle issue (Swan, M. (2013)) I believe that the reason for the success is the community factor and the possibility to share your information about your life and achievements.

Within QS there are several distinct categories where many are health-related, please see the Swan, M. (2013) article for the full list. While there is no specific category with a focus on digital habits there are plenty of categories that would be affected by your digital habits, as physical activities, psychological states and mental & cognitive states. Due to the popularity of these categories one could draw the conclusion that it’s possible that the monitoring of digital habits could produce the same or similar levels of motivation.

While there are other data-tracking applications that attempts to use a community design the QS community provides a very personal experience and what can be perceived as a prominent level of commitment among its users. I believe that this is the sort of community that an application with the aim of tracking digital habits can benefit from.

3.3 Gamification

When designing for enjoyment and motivation, one can use the concept of gamification. Gamification essentially means using game-like elements in a non-game context (Deterding, S. (2015)). To fully understand the motivations of gameplay and game design the player experience of need satisfaction (PENS) model can be used. The model is based on the theory of Self-Determination (SDT), arguing that people will be intrinsically motivated to engage in activities simply to satisfy psychological needs (Deterding, S. (2015)).

- “[…] three innate psychological needs: autonomy, the experience of acting with volition and willingness, in congruence with one’s own goals, needs, values, and identity; competence, the experience of one’s (growing) ability to achieve desired change in the world; and relatedness, a sense of intimate connection with others (Deterding, S. (2015)).”

PENS describe the that the user choice of engaging in a game related activity is motivated by one or two factors. Either that there is interest grounded in previous experiences of need satisfaction or a deprivation of said needs. The user need satisfaction in the PENS model reflect the psychological needs from SDT. By using the psychological needs from the SDT you can essentially map what design decisions that create an experience that the user perceives as fun and immersive.

To meet these requirements and achieve game enjoyment the mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics (MDA) model should be used. Mechanics specifies possible actions within the system, which creates dynamics that then creates aesthetics (Deterding, S. (2015)). So, by creating the correct mechanics you can accomplish an aesthetic that will be pleasing to the user.

3.3.1 Intrinsic & Extrinsic design

Intrinsic and extrinsic are term to be used to define the origin of motivation. Intrinsic can be defined by the following:

- "Intrinsic motivation occurs when we act without any obvious external rewards. We simply enjoy an activity or see it as an opportunity to explore, learn, and actualize our potentials (Cherry, K. (2016))."

Extrinsic motivation is motivation that occurs from any type of external reward that is not covered under the previous definition.

The difference in motivation can provide a very different way for users to interact with a system, intrinsic motivation has been proven to result in high-quality learning and creativity while extrinsic can allow users to engage in activities that they deem to be bothersome or disinteresting with the only motivation being the end-goal (Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000)).

In the book A Gameful World by Walz, S. P., and Deterding, S they also present the correlation between the QS community and gamification. While the QS platform does not implement any typical aspects of gamification the products that the QS participants use traditionally do have gamification aspects (Walz, S. P., & Deterding, S. (Eds.). (2015)). They describe the example of Nike+ a tracking device that tracks everyday physical activity and translates this into a universal score. They then further argue that this is an example of the natural intersection between the community and gamification.

3.4 Persuasive computing

Persuasive computing is essentially the concept of making computing products elicit social responses by using social cues (Fogg, B. J. (2002)). By designing to elicit a social response that response can result in further motivation for the user. As motivation is key to maintaining user engagement the concept of persuasive computing works well together with gamification. In the article by Fogg, B, J, they present five different social cues that can be used to persuade users:

• Physical • Psychological • Language • Social dynamics • Social roles

The physical and psychological are the two cues that I’m primarily interested in for this project. The physical cue essentially means that you are using physical attributes within the application to convey a feeling or a message. If the graphical style of the application is attractive, that will convey a feeling of

competence to the user. Furthermore, the psychological cue means that the application is designed to present an emotion of sorts, in practice this would mean that If a user is having unusually bad habits the application is supposed to not show this in a neutral state but in a emotional state.

I believe that from the concept of data tracking you can use both a physical and a psychological cue to create user motivation. This motivation can then further work together with the gamification aspects of the application.

3.5 Related work

Currently there are many different data-tracking application, many that has gamification aspects integrated. Many of the popular application appear to have one thing in common, they track physical activity. If you look at applications that track digital habits, QualityTime on android uses the traditional route of tracking usage and displaying which applications has been used and how much they have been used. While this application performs what it’s supposed to do, it lacks gamification and community elements meaning that the user will work with their digital usage in a private manner motivated only by personal autonomy. There is also application that take a different approach, the application Forest: Stay focused allows the user to plant a digital seed that will grow from digital inactivity and wither from activity. This creates good extrinsic motivation and should be able to help the user towards reducing their digital usage.

4 Methods

4.1.1 Survey

To start this project of I wanted to create a baseline for what habits people of my demographic had and how they felt regarding those habits. To achieve this a decided on creating a 19-question survey. Fowler writes the following regarding surveys:

- “Surveys are designed to produce statistics about a target population. The process by which this is done rests on inferring the characteristics of the target population from the answers provided by a sample of respondents” Fowler Jr, F. J. (2013)

With this description I considered the method to be viable in terms of producing a reliable baseline for the behaviour and opinions of my demographic. The majority of the theory presented regarding addiction in digital devices relies on the results of surveys. When the aim is to analyse patterns of behaviour over larger demographics the most popular method appears to be surveys. On the other hand, addictive behaviour can be

analysed in a more qualitative manner too. By documenting and analysing qualitative data from the habits of a fewer number of individuals you can draw conclusions that can provide much more insight into how those specific individuals can work to improve their own habits. But the aim of this project is not to provide a system that is that in-depth but to provide a solution that works based on the general habits and motivations of a large demographic. This is the reason that this method is used as a primary baseline for further development.

4.1.2 Prototyping

Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., & Preece, J. describes the process of interaction design in their book with four steps:

1. Establishing requirements 2. Designing alternatives 3. Prototyping

4. Evaluating

As due to the importance of the user experience, keeping a dialog between the designer and the user is vital to the design process (Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., & Preece, J). Creating and iterating on a prototype from low fidelity to finalized design will be very beneficial in terms of meeting the requirement of both user and designer. Through this process the survey acts as a baseline for the user requirements and the design is then further iterated using usability testing.

The process of prototyping will involve sketching on the user requirements. Concluding which features that are possible, required or desired by either myself or the user. By mapping this with low-fidelity prototypes the aim is to be able to combine these into a final product holding to most valuable functions while still working to the usability requirements set by the user.

4.1.3 Usability testing

When designing for user-centred design one of the core elements is evaluation. This can be done in many ways but for this specific project I chose to perform a usability test. Usability testing can include many different methods but for this project I chose to use two different methods, thinking aloud and interviews. The reason for this Is that my aim is to identify both issues that I may have missed as well as analysing concern that I already have together with the test-subjects (Abras, C., Maloney-Krichmar, D., & Preece, J. (2004)).

4.1.3.1 Thinking aloud

Thinking aloud involves the test-subject going through the process of using the application while articulating everything they do and think throughout this process. The point of this is to identify If the application will be used as I intended when it was developed, as well as highlight all minor concerns that

the test-subject discovers throughout the test. When working the development and design of an application for a longer period of time you create habits while working which can result in you making assumptions about the usage habits of everyone else. To prevent this, you allow someone that has no relationship or information about the application to navigate through it, providing insight if there are any interactions that are occurring in a different manner than intended.

4.1.3.2 Interviews

The point of the interviews is for the test-subject and I to have a discussion regarding both the concern that I’ve found throughout the design process and the concern that the test-subject found through the thinking aloud test. Discussing the application with someone totally uninvolved in the development of the application can provide insight that I am not able to see due to my position in the development. To be able to apply any insights that I might catch during the thinking aloud session it’s important that I discuss the specific interaction with the test subject. The aim of both of these methods are to identify possible flaws and faults in the system and if I don’t understand why the user is acting the way they are I can’t incorporate It into the design. If I fully understand the reasoning behind the actions of the user, I can use this when I further iterate the design.

5 Design process

5.1 Survey

This survey featured four sections, three primary sections with questions regarding computer, smartphone and television usage and a concluding section summarizing thoughts regarding general habits. With this I aimed to receive a more concrete understanding of the user habits and possibly identifying patterns between applications and behaviour.

The survey was made using the Google Forms tool and shared using Facebook. 42 individuals filled out the survey and 61,9% of them were male, 38,1% were female. The average age of the participant came to 28.4, which fits well with the average of the millennial demographic (27).

5.1.1 Survey outcome

Most popular activity (Figure 1): Computer School/work 59,5% Social media 16,7% General browsing 11,9% Gaming 9,5%

Smartphone Social media 76,2% Calling/texting 9,52% General browsing 7,1% Gaming 4,8% Television Video streaming 52,4% Regular television 26,2% Gaming 2,4 % -

Figure 1 - Most popular activity

Perceived average daily time and whether the user believe their usage is excessive (Figure 2): Average daily usage (Hr) Believes that usage is too much

Does not believe that usage is too

much

Computer 5,82 36,6% 63,4%

Smartphone 2,63 64,3% 35,7%

Figure 2 - Average daily activity

Have you ever attempted to reduce your usage of a specific device (Figure 3):

Yes No

Computer 21,4% 78,6%

Smartphone 35,7% 64,3%

Television 9,5% 90,5%

Figure 3 - Have you ever attempted to reduce usage?

5.1.2 Survey conclusions

From the results of the survey it’s clear that the participants are mostly concerned with the time they spend using smartphones. Computer activity appears not cause as much concern because most of the participants use it mainly for school/work purposes. As this activity is perceived a necessary part of the daily human life participants lack concern for the very high amount of usage (5,82 hours daily).

There is also a clear correlation between usage concern and active attempts to reduce usage, this further strengthens the idea that the primary concern is smartphones and social media.

Television usage appears to be significantly more limited in comparison to the other digital devices and in general there appears to be little to no concern among the participants.

5.2 Prototype

5.2.1 Early concepts

By evaluating applications within the business of data-tracking I was able to determine four significant traits that appear in many of these applications.

These four traits I have named the following:

Large overview

Concept based on the idea of monitoring user behaviour and visualizing larger periods of time with the aim of creating interesting insight for the user by providing an in-depth analysis. An example of this would be the Huawei Health application.

Intrusive design

Creating an intrusive interaction between the system and the user. Essentially the system actively warning the user that their behaviour is not in line with what the system has been told is correct. This can go as far as the system restricting user access. An example of this would be Microsoft Family.

Non-intrusive design

Visualizing daily behaviour in a non-intrusive way. Allowing the information to be accessible but allowing the user interest to be the motivator for

interaction between the system and the user. An example of this would be the QualityTime application.

Competitive perspective

Using aspects of competition to motivate the user into interacting with the application and through that, taking control of their behaviour and achieving both a desirable experience and digital habits. An example would be the RunKeeper application.

Each of these four traits (Figure 4) have features that I deem to be relevant regarding the literature and current applications. By analysing these concepts in relation to the theory I was able to come to the following conclusions:

• A large overview perspective has a large amount of potential. This shows as this is the method used by most health-based tracking applications. But for the concept to be viable there needs to be further motivators, in-depth analysis requires more time and effort to use and therefore more motivation from the user.

• Intrusive design can be effective but due to the intrusive nature it’s possible that the relationship between the user and the system becomes flawed and it ends up with the user feeling hostile towards the application, resulting in there being no benefit at all.

• Non-intrusive design relies on the motivation of the user to maintain the use of the application. If this motivation disappears the application will lose its purpose.

• Competitive perspective can provide a large amount of motivation for the application but there needs to be a balance so that the true purpose of the application doesn’t disappear behind the competitive aspect.

Through identifying the strong and the weak aspects of each concept I started creating potential models for a final prototype.

5.2.2 Low fidelity models

From the perspective of the different traits I started looking at what exactly that was desirable within those traits. From this I started creating very simple concepts based on what I found. The reason for these concepts were to give me further insight into which environment that you can utilize these concepts and how you can move forward to possible combine the most desirable features together to a final concept. The result were four simple concepts, each reflecting on a trait.

A filling bar

The filling bar is based on the idea of the non-intrusive design. The functionality would involve the user setting directives for their own usage. The program would then continue to monitor and fill according to the

measurements set by the user. If the bar becomes full from extensive usage it will simply remain full without any further interaction between system and user. The idea here is to provide non-intrusive information to the user and when the user eventually sees the progress of the bar they will be influenced and enough that they remove themselves from the digital device.

I feel that the positive factors of this is that if the user hold a large amount of motivation themselves this becomes a very handy tool. It can be displayed in the background of a desktop or phone without ever intruding, allowing for influence only when the user seeks it. The potential issue is that the required amount of pure self-motivation is potentially not common enough to allow this to work on a larger scale.

Three Levels

The next concept is the direct opposite of the first, the intrusive design. The design here relies on the user creating three different usage levels. When a specific amount of time is reached the system will proceed to lock the user out of the device. The aim is to force the user into different habits and progressively lower the allowed amount of time.

This can be seen to be very popular in parental applications where the aim is to monitor and manage child usage automatically. But when you get the application for yourself, not only can you cheat but you will most likely get tired of the intrusive interaction from the system.

I would say that to maintain a system like this you need to have even more personal motivation than you require in the filling bar concept.

Chart

Filling bar

The currently most common way to display habits. Charts and graphs provide good insight into your habits, so good that the fact you can compare so extensively might motivate you to further engage in the related activity. In this instance the aim of the chart is to provide an overview of your digital habits in relation to a reference point where you would like your habits to be. This means that this will not have the direct impact that the filling bar/three level will have but instead create an environment that provides more motivation potentially allows the user to continue working on their habits for a longer period of time. The concept having data analysed over longer periods of time also improves the benefit of sharing with others. This opens up the possibility for users to get insight into their peers’ different habits to compare and analyse. Because of this I perceive the possibilities with this concept to be larger than the two previously stated concepts.

Competing bars

My primary thought when creating a concept based on a competitive aspect was that I do not believe that people want to compete against each other in term of comparing how much they can reduce their digital usage. Instead I thought that creating a system where you compete against yourself is more suitable. Because of this I created the concept of competing bars, based on the visuals of the filling bar this concept would compare your digital usage together with a different activity of your choosing.

The idea is that if you want to reduce your digital usage you display that together with an activity that you would like to do more, for example studying or physical exercise. By displaying them together the aim is to have both factors influence each other, ultimately making you decrease one and increase the other. The potential problem that I can see with this is that this places further requirement on the user. They will need to have another activity that they are very motivated about to be able to have the desired influence.

There is also the concern that it’s a very niche application, people that are looking for an application to help them with their digital behaviour might reject this concept due to the fact that it involves factors outside of digital behaviour.

Conclusion

These different concepts all hold potentially desirable functions, the aim of this process was to identify what features would work well together. On their own these concepts are all quite weak and further development requires you to borrow aspects from more than one concept.

The primary conclusion achieved from the process of analysing these concept was that my aim with this prototype is an application that can sustain the motivation among the users and allow progression over time without the user getting tired or bored of the system. It’s important that the system itself helps the user achieve the required motivation to continuously work with their habits.

On their own these concepts rely heavily on the user being highly motivated to engage in the application. They are also not shaped in a way to maintain motivation in the user, risking that the application usage becomes short-lived. These are thoughts that I deem highly relevant when designing the final concept.

5.2.3 Finalized model

The finalized model was created into a low fidelity prototype. It relied on providing a large overview of data in a non-intrusive manner with competitive aspects and it had the following features:

• Long term data collection • Multiplatform application • Social community

• Game-like elements • International comparisons

Long term data collection

The core function of the application is the collection of data. In terms of baseline motivation, the interest in personal digital habits will be what motivates future users to engage and download the application. Due to this the data-tracking functionality needs to perform as good as possible. The app will track the following:

• Amount of time • Geographic location • Platform

• Type of application

By collecting this data, the application should be able to produce insights that meet the requirements of the users.

Multiplatform application

Being able to compare habits on different digital platforms is an important feature. While the survey results pointed towards users being primarily concerned with their smartphone usage it doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t be able to track your computer or television usage. Furthermore, as many people use more than one device daily, it should be relevant to view the collective data summarizing all digital devices that has been used.

Social community

As one of my inspirations for this project is the Quantified Self (QS) community I felt that a social community can be a very strong incentive for the user. If the user has an interest in their own health and habits I believe that it’s natural for them to want to share and discuss their progress. With a community the application affordances might evolve from just monitoring your own behaviour to sharing, assisting and helping others.

Game-like elements

To enforce the motivational factors within the community I use gamification elements. The aim of these elements is to create further motivation outside of the personal motivation from the interest in data-tracking. Creating some competitive aspects between users will result in challenge which is one of the core requirements for intrinsic design which I believe will fit my application very well.

International comparisons

Apart from tracking personal data I want all data to be summarized and presented in relation to geographic location. This is to provide I geographic overview of digital habits that users around the world can compare their personal habits to. This will also work to provide users with more content to share with the community.

5.2.4 Prototype

With these five features I had the baseline required to start making a digital prototype. The aim of this prototype was to give the user a feel of the functionality that I was aiming for, providing insight into how the community would work and where the motivation would come from. Due to this I decided to create a prototype using the application called Adobe Xd. This is an application that is used for creating interactive UX prototypes and not fully working applications. I chose this because I believe that creating an application that works with real time data would be outside of my timeframe and collecting user data with said application would take a too large amount of time.

The first menu (Figure 5) in the application contains three significant sections:

• Personal data • Global data

• Application community

My aim with this menu was to make navigation very simple while also having a clear and clean design. Each of the icons are meant to be self-explanatory and allow the user to navigate without further help. This idea is a red thread throughout the prototype.

By pressing the first icon the user is taken to the data menu. This menu is designed to allow the user to decide specifically which type of data he wants to view. The idea here is that the user can access data regarding time, platform and type of application. The user will then choose and be presented with personal data related to the choice he made.

The second icon of the first menu, the globe will take you to a page with a world map. This page will allow the user to choose a country. Choosing a country will take you to a data menu that will allow the user to view data on the chosen country. A difference here is that the user will be able to compare the global data to their own data.

Figure 6 - First menu

The third button takes the user to the community pages (Figure 7) which begins with a community menu. In this menu the user is given three different options:

• Profile • Forum • Settings

This purpose of this menu is to clearly divide the action of viewing ones’ own content with accessing other community-based content. The ability to follow up on your own posts and comments is a very important and therefore its necessary that the process of accessing your own content is smooth and efficient. By grouping all content that the user produced in one accessible place I believe that everything should be very accessible. All posts created by the user can be found under the posts button and the posts where the user has commented can be found under the comments button. This should mean that following up on a long discussion from an old post should not be hard as it can be accessed through the posts where you have been active yourself. Furthermore, under the profile page there are also a point-count as well as the page leading to the player acquired badges. The point-count presents the player gathered points which are gathered by being engaged in the community. Badges are trophies awarded for completing milestones within the community. These milestones are intended to be based on community activity and not on digital behaviour.

The second icon takes you to the forum pages which begins with a topic page, here all accessible content within the community can be accessed from here. The idea is that the different displayed topics will be created depending on the interests of the users. If many posts are created in a topic that is not yet

available, one should be created by application developers. Clicking one of these topics will then take the user to the related posts.

Pages displaying posts (Figure 7) will have the same graphical style to maintain the feel of the application. The posts regarding video game addiction have been accessed through the topics page which means that the big green plus-icon will allow the user to create a new post in the subject of video game addiction as well as browse through the community posts on the subject. The other image, named just posts is the page presenting your own created posts. Here you can also display how many points your post has gathered by the green circle holding a number.

From the post pages the user can access a content page. Here the main contents of a post are displayed along with comments. This example (Figure 8) displays a post created by you, which can be identified by the fact that you can view how many points this post has. This means that you are only able to view the scores of the posts and comments that you yourself have created. To the right of the post content you can see the comments, here you can give points to other people, but you are not able to view their points on the specific comment.

Another major part of this post is the links to data. Both in the post content and in the comments, there are link to dataset. This means that the individual creating the post or comment has referred to a dataset and allowed this to be accessed by the people viewing the post. This dataset might be either personal data, global data or a comparison of sort. By along the content creator to quickly and clearly reference the data that they are discussing I believe that the content becomes more intriguing.

Summarized the completed prototype houses two separate parts that are intended to work tightly together. The personal and global data will work to provide users with enough content that they feel that they have an interest to share and discuss their findings. The community pages with provide the user with the framework to do so and further push the motivation through a point-based system relying on community engagement.

5.3 Usability test

To evaluate the prototype, a usability test is performed. The purpose of this test is to explore the interactions and the logic behind the application. The test includes three participants that each will be allowed to try the application under instruction to perform specific tasks.

The tasks directed to the participants are: • Browse personal data

• Browse global data • Access forum page • Create forum post

• Browse user posts/comments • Remark user points

• View badges

When presented to the user these tasks are presented in a randomized order to not aid the participant in any way. During test the user will be asked to use the method of thinking aloud to provide insight into the process of using the application. After attempting to complete these tasks the participant will be asked to provide their opinions and concerns regarding specific parts of the

system through an interview. All insights will then further be summarized and presented within the next section. All the test-participant is within the correct demographic and have been asked about their digital habits. The interview covered questions regarding the motivation of the point system, the interest in global/personal data and how users can be motivated to share their results and get engaged in the posts of others.

5.3.1 Results

Test 1/Participant 1

Participant 1 is a 25-year-old male, perceives himself to use digital devices around 8 hours a day with the primary interests being video games, social media and Netflix. He completed all tasks and had the following input:

Positive:

• Concept is interesting • Layout is familiar

• Most icons are very relatable

Negative:

• Pages are very similar in style, it becomes confusing. • User points feels insignificant

• Some icons are not relatable

Participant 1 shared that they believed the layout and structure of the application was familiar and therefore easy to navigate. But while it was easy to navigate the graphical style of the different wireframes was quite similar and therefore he felt that confusion sometimes occurred when navigating around. Furthermore, he commented that many of the icons are very self-explanatory but specifically the icons for the various kinds of data charts, as well as the two different profile icons could be more informative. During the interview participant 1 proposed that the point system needs to be further motivating. The fact that you can receive and give points was appreciated but he believed that the points need to produce more external rewards. He commented that the access to personal data was desirable and the global data would be interesting. Regarding whether people will be motivated to share he did not have any opinion.

Test 2/Participant 2

Participant 2 is a 23-year-old male, uses digital devices around 3 hours each day and his primary digital interests include Social media and Netflix. From the thinking-aloud-method I gathered the following:

Positive:

• Application navigation is smooth • Forward navigation logic is good

Negative:

• No button to create comment • Backwards navigation is very bad

• Big community icon is not clickable and feels out of place

The biggest concern showed by participant 2 was that the backwards navigation together with some icons that were not clickable created a big problem. He said that when you click somewhere and expect to go forward and instead navigate backwards it creates a lot of confusion. When asked about the point system participant 2 said that he recognized the system and said that I could be interesting, but he was unsure if it could work within this context. While the concept of data-tracking is not something that was desired by participant 2 he stated that there could be a demand for something like this.

Test 3/Participant 3

Participant 3 is a 29-year-old male that uses digital devices around 8 hours each day. His primary digital activities are video games on the television. The thinking aloud gave the following:

Positive:

• Looks good

Negative:

• Backwards navigation is awkward

In general, participant 3 was very positive towards the concept and the application. He stated that it’s something that he felt that he would need due to his digital habits. The point system was appreciated, and the personal and global data was deemed desirable. One key issue that participant 3 highlighted was that not being able to view the points of other people appears to be a major flaw. From follow-up discussions during the interviews he stated that he did not know any similar systems where they had this design and he believed it to be a mistake to have it this way.

5.3.2 Summary

From the results of the three usability tests there are a few conclusions that I have acquired:

• Forward navigation is good – None of the participant appeared to have any problems to navigate in a forward manner. Participant 1 mentioned that he didn’t like that there was no text but there was still no problem for him to navigate.

• Backwards navigation is not good – The backwards navigation was heavily criticized by participant 2 and it was also mentioned by participant 3. The backwards navigation needs to be changed to a more relatable design.

• Point system should work – Whether the point system can work as a motivator or not is hard to define without a longer more extensive user test, but none of the participant dismissed the concept and instead showed interest.

• Points viewable for everyone – From the input of participant 3 I realised that not being able to view the points of other in posts and comments might be a huge flaw. Not being able to view was also not an intended design choice during the design process but a result of me not thoroughly going through all aspects of the point system. In line with the opinions of participant 3 I believe that this needs to be revised.

• Graphic style is alright – The graphical style received some compliments and little critique. The only concern is that too many assets have been reused for the prototype but this I deemed unavoidable due to the limitations of the timeframe.

• A few icons will need to be revised – Primarily the icons leading to the various data charts needs to be more informative, either with other icons or with text. Currently the users did not feel that they understood the difference between them. Furthermore, it’s possible that I need to adapt the icons for the two different profile pages as they are currently identical.

The outcome of the usability test points towards the concept being viable, there a few graphical decisions that needs to be revised but looking at the concept and the motivational factors none of the participants dismissed the application. Participant showed a lot of familiarity towards the point-based mechanics within the community referring to similar communities as Facebook and Reddit. This familiarity was referred to in a positive manner and this reflects the concept of persuasive computing as people will assume the competence of the application if they feel that the visual design is familiar to something that they already use.

The interviews did also confirm the results of the survey. The participant showed a mentality towards their digital habits as problematic when the topic was discussed. Even if the usage varied significantly in amount among the participants they all showed signs of being concerned with how they spend their time, not in a way that they felt that it’s something that must stop but that it was a concern that had come to mind on previous occasions.

I believe the outcome of this usability test shows that there can be need for individuals to have their behaviour visualized and have the possibility to share and discuss this with others.

6 Discussion

From the perspective of the theory and the survey results it’s quite clear that a sizable portion of the millennial population appears to deal with some concern regarding their digital habits. The cause and effect of these concerns clearly differ between people but the fact the usage of digital devices is becoming an increasingly relevant problem is not debatable. I believe that when people think about this problem, many stop with the idea that we spend too much time in front of screens. I believe that this is a rather unproductive conclusion, one that a lot of people has been aware of for a long time but brings very little action. The reason for this might be the fact that people are also aware of the increasing hold that digital devices has on the human life. This does not just mean that we are addicted, social communities created through digital devices easily becomes so important to maintain social connection that we are unable to disconnect. From this perspective I believe that instead of using the mindset that we need to simply reduce usage; a tool should aim to create an open space where they can explore what they want their habits to look like.

The Quantified Self community is a good example of a community that provides that open space. While a substantial portion of the motivation surely comes from the personal interest of data-tracking I believe that a critical factor is that the users are also motivated by the ability to engage and share with each other. Connecting a source of information or accomplishment with an ability to share and discuss appears to be a good recipe. I shaped my solution from the idea of a similar community, a community where the interest in your personal behaviour will be enough of a motivational factor to make people engage with each other.

It's important to understand that gamification as a concept is not restricted to the development of games. As can be read in the literature by S. Deterding the concept of gamification is understanding how to produce motivation among users of any kind of system. When designing a game you design ways to motivate the player, but generally all applications require motivation. It could be either extrinsic or intrinsic or both, depending on the application. Within this project it might be the intrinsic motivation that results in the user acquiring the application but if that motivation is not nurtured properly within the application there is a huge risk that the motivation dies as time passes and then the application will lose it’s purpose. This is increasingly relevant in an application that relies on a community. The community itself creates motivation based on the people participating, if people leave due to declining motivation it will result in an escalating effect that will eventually kill the entire community. Because of this I chose to use the concept of gamification as a driving factor for motivation with my users.

By looking at popular communities like Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Imgur you can see that they rely on gamification designs. Facebook and Instagram likes & shares as well as Reddit and Imgur upvotes and downvotes. The gamification aspects of these communities are vital to their popularity, vital to maintaining the motivation of the users. In the article by Detering, S he discusses intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in relation to the Self-Determination Theory and how motivation essentially is core to success. From the perspective of the text I decided that aiming for a majority of intrinsic motivation would be the best solution. Changing personal behaviour and engaging with a social community both fall under the psychological needs mentioned in the SDT, meaning that if you attempt to make these needs core for the solution the user should be primarily intrinsically motivated. While intrinsic motivation should be the core motivation of the application I believe that if you can achieve extrinsic motivation it’s equally beneficial. But achieving proper extrinsic motivation means that you provide the user with extrinsic rewards that motivate a process that might not be interesting or even undesirable for the user, making it much harder to design for extrinsic motivation. The Forest: Stay focused presents an effective way of using extrinsic motivation. As people will refrain from using digital devices due to the external rewards of the application that will ultimately result in reduced usage. But this clash with a core problem, to get the biggest reward from the application the user needs to reduce their usage to nothing. From the perspective of the fieldwork it’s clear that this is not desired either. From this conclusion I believe that this type of extrinsic design does not work on its own and it must be matched with intrinsic to some degree.

The final prototype featured primarily designs for intrinsic motivation, the access to personal and global data aimed to provide the user with the motivation to pursue personal goals and increasing personal competence. It also aimed to create a platform to allow for the creation of personal connections to other people, all working along with the psychological needs from the SDT. On top of this I chose to create to badge system, a lesser extrinsic motivation with the hope that people will feel accomplishment from receiving badges from the commitment that to put in the community. Verifying if the badge system would result in extrinsic motivation or simply neglect is something that would take a long time to test and therefore I can only rely on the positive comments from the usability test, hinting that it might work.

While I did not have the time to design the actual graphical profile of the data representation it could be identified that the familiarity that the test participants felt resulted in the social responses that was discussed in relation to persuasive computing. By feeling a sense of familiarity, the users assumed the application to be competent in the same sense as the application that to correlated it to. This would be even more clear if the graphical data

visualisation was created but the results of the usability test still points towards the same result.

It’s also important to note that there are concerns with this design, from the usability tests I understood that people respond very positively to familiarity, and since my design hold similarities to some of the greatest social networks it’s obvious that that would attract positive responses. But creating motivation from the concept of community interaction also requires there to be a community. During my work with this application I also realised that for every successful Facebook there are ten failed ones without any users. The requirements for a user to keep using the application are therefore not only that he enjoys it but also that there is enough of a community to support his motivation.

There is also the concern of integrity. While almost everyone uses digital devices daily discussing potentially excessive digital habits is still not common. While it’s not perceived to be even close to as bad as substance or gambling abuse people are still aware of their behaviour and often concerned about it, as can be seen by the survey. This means that this behaviour is often considered a sensitive subject and people can therefore sometimes be reluctant to share their habits. This was very much taken into consideration when creating a early competitive concept as putting people against each other in terms of digital behaviour would probably have a bad outcome. Still, creating awareness about a concern that is this widespread requires you to have people share their experiences and habits. This is why I felt that a non-hostile community can be the key, similar to how people are not concerned with sharing their weight within a weight-reduction community. By creating an atmosphere where users know that the people within the community are there for the same reasons it should feel easier for them to share things that they maybe normally wouldn’t.

From these conclusions I believe that there are definitely potential concerns with the design and with the subject. But there are also great possibilities, creating a community like this has the ability to result in a space where people can work together with issues that they normally would ignore.

7 Conclusion

The process of research, prototyping and testing through this project has provided me with many insights. Insights into how the survey showed that people spend incredible amounts of time with their digital devices and that concern regarding digital habits is not as simple as saying you are using this too much to yourself. The theory showed that there are problems with excessive or addictive behaviour with all three types of digital devices and

there are both physical and psychological health implications if you do not change your behaviour.

When treating excessive usage of digital devices, documenting your behaviour and then analysing it is the recommended way of dealing with it. Current tools and applications appear to assist with this in some way, but still have the focus only on reduction. Digital products are and will be a significant part of our life in the coming future, it’s not going to be possible to completely disconnect. Yet people still feel that they are concerned regarding the way the spend their time and the way that they feel doing so. From the results of this process I believe that using a community can be the correct tool to deal with these issues. Creating transparency among people and focusing on control and awareness instead of just reduction is something that could work. It’s clear that people have shown that they are motivated to share and discuss their accomplishments and that’s what will drive an application like this. Another thought that occurred from this project is that not only personal awareness with be gained from a social community but there should also be external awareness. By external awareness I mean that the awareness about habits and the health implications of those habits can also reach outside of the community, to people that might not initially have concluded that their digital habits can be an issue. This would mean that some people might find that problems they have been dealing with might be rooted in how the use different digital devices.

By researching gamification and persuasive computing I’m also able to see how these concepts are being used in almost every popular digital application. For me this means that I’m confident in my choice to use these concepts as the baseline for motivation among users and I believe that this only further proves that If you aim to create something like this it would be impossible to avoid implementing gamification and persuasion.

But while I still feel very positive towards the end-product and the results of the usability tests I still know that there are significant obstacles for a project like this. The most relevant one being that the requirements of creating a social community are incredibly high and the chances that it will fail if not all requirements are met is close to certain. At the same time, I believe that this is a risk that must be taken, creating a social community is not easy but if successful it’s going to be a major accomplishment.

Furthermore, I realised that persuasive computing could have been utilized further throughout this project. The issue with this is that persuasive computing is very much in the details of the design, for example designing specific visualizations to invoke specific emotions in the user. Because my focus was on designing the social community I feel that the designs that would be producing the social cues fell behind and at this stage I feel that it’s something that could have had a significant impact in the outcome of this project.

As the community is such a relevant factor in this project I also believe that the research into human interaction within social communities is somewhat lacking. The choice of implementing a social community is based on the motivational factors of the SDT and the effect that will have together with the gamification designs. There has been no actual research into how individuals interact with each other on social communities and I believe that if you would look at that more in-depth you could further motivate the choice of a community and maybe also create a stronger reasoning as to why gamification is such a strong aspect of a social community.

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