SCREEN TIME OUT
ROLE
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UI/UX Designer &
Researcher
DURATION
January 2022 - March 2022
(3 Months)
PROJECT OVERVIEW
PROJECT OVERVIEW
TOOLS
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Figma,
Adobe Photoshop
The Product
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Screen Time Out is a smartphone application designed to combat addiction by limiting screen time and application usage, with added parental control features for monitoring children's screen usage.
The Problem
Are we addicted to our smartphones?This is a common question that has arisen in recent years as our smartphone technologies and capabilities continue to increase our screen time. While we talk, text, check our e-mail, surf the Internet, and interact on social media, our screen usage times continue to increase. Increased usage of phones has been seen most amongst children and teenagers. This is not only taking away their crucial time but also harming their health. Smartphones have integrated into every aspect of our lives, whether it be tracking your health or keeping up with work. This level of penetration into the lives of our population has made them indisposable and a crutch, rather than a convenience. This necessity or dependency is the addiction that people face with their smartphones.
The Goal
Address smartphone addiction by reducing overall screen time and application usage.Provide users with tools to monitor and manage their screen usage habits effectively.Integrate parental control features to assist parents in monitoring and regulating their children's screen time.Promote healthier screen usage habits among users, contributing to improved well-being and productivity.
Responsibilities
Create intuitive Interfaces, Conduct User Research, Collaborate with developers to ensure smooth implementation, and Iterating based on User Feedback.
Knowing More About The Problem
All age groups suffer from phone addiction, but the major sufferers are teenagers and people between 20-35years. I conducted user interviews to understand the problem better from potential user’s point of view.
Goals of User Interview
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Knowing the User.
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Knowing the User’s problem
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Knowing the User’s needs.
Conclusion Drawn From Interview
User
Needs
Insights
A student who intends to use phone for homework, but ends up wasting time on social media.
Platform that allows limiting the usage of
particular applications.
User is anxious about wasting their precious time on various social media applications.
A parent who wants to limit the screen usage of their children.
A platform that allows them to keep an eye on their kid’s screen time usage.
User has two children, one 9 year old and other 14 year old. User is concerned about their kid’s over-usage of phone. The inbuilt wellbeing app in phone doesn’t have any feature that allows parent to restrict or monitor children’s phone usage.
An adult who is concerned about the effects of over-usage of screen on their eye sight.
Platform that shows the user their daily phone usage and its impact on their eye sight.
User is concered about the damage being sustained by their eyes by over usage of phone. The wellbeing app doesn’t have any feature that warns users about eye strain levels.health.
A parent who wants to monitor the screen usage of their children.
A platform that allows them to monitor their kid’s screen activity.
The user, a concerned mother of a teenager, seeks a solution to monitor her child's phone usage as the existing phone's wellbeing app lacks this feature, desiring alerts for her child's screen time.
Users included students, working professionals and parents. Mapped user interviews into an empathy map given below:
Where can I check my screen time?
Can I set timer
on applications?
Can I set timer
on the screen?
No properinformation on screen time usage.
Can I monitor my child’s screen activity?
Able to access kid’s screen usage records.
Couldn’t monitor eye
strain level
See ?
Think & Feel?
Can set alerts to restrict/limit usage.
Say & Do?
Couldn’t monitor child’s screen activity.
Hear?
Can I set timer
on applications?
Can improve by comparing screen time usage.
Other apps don’t allow monitoring kid’s activity.
Other apps don’t have health check feature.
Other apps don’t show the comparisons of usage.
Pain Points
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Using screen more is harming health.
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More phone usage leads to more wastage of time.
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More children have been addicted to phones.
Gain Points
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Saving time by comparing improvement & monitoring usage.
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Breaking phone addiction by limiting usage.
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Tracking health and kid’s activity for improvement
Proposed Solution
Smartphones have become an integral and indispensable part of our lives. We cannot expunge smartphones from our lives completely, but we can reduce their usage. Screen Time Out helps users get rid of their phone addiction by limiting their total screen time as well as various applications’ usage. Screen Time Out has a special Parent Control feature that allows parents to keep track of their kid’s screen usage. Users can monitor their health and accordingly set a timer for their screen usage.
User Flow
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Hand Sketches
Digital Wireframes
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User Interface
Colors
Iconography
Typography
Logo
User Interface
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User Testing
After implementing all the needs listed by the users during the interview, gave users Usability Testing tasks to ensure proper implementation of all the features.
Goals of Testing
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To check whether all the features are working properly and fit user requirements?
Is there anything missing that would make user experience in Screen time Out a better experience?
Prepared behavior interview questions and testing task list.
Define the Testing Tasks
​
LogIn/SignUp
Set timer on any application.
Check out the Parent Control option.
Set alerts using the Parent Control option.
Check your weekly comparisons.
Check your daily health.
Participant 1
Task 1
Using this app, set timer on any application.
Task 2
Set alerts, using the Parent Control feature.
Task 3
Using this app, check your weekly comparisons and health.
The feature listing at the main menu are easy to understand. Could easily find the timer option because of the icon.
It was to find the alert option under the parent control dashboard. The alert feature is really helpful.
Weren’t able to find the the feature easily because of the confusing icons.
Participant 2
Both the ways of setting the timerwere easy and prominent, was easilyable to set the timer.
The alert is not at the main menu so, got confused at first sight, but then after opening the parent control was easily able to set alerts.
The comparison tool is really helpfull to keep track of my improvement.
Participant 3
Really liked the UI design, and also found it extremely easy to navigate between the features.
Liked the whole concept of parent control feature and how it is designed. Feels the access Key part is a great idea.
The comparison tool is amazing, the UI of the page is really pretty, specially the colors choosed for the graph.
Participant 4
Participant 5
It was easy to find the timer icon and set the timer but it should have been accessible from the home page.
Liked how the icon changes color when the alarm is set. Also the alarm list is really helpfull.
Didn’t find the health tool much helpfull, could have been implemented in a better way.
The icon choice is clear and pretty. Like how all icons match each other. Setting the timer was easy because of the icon.
Find it interesting that the alert feature is the feature of the parent dashboard and not the app home screen.
The health tool is fine. The comparison tool is great but the graph seems unclear.
Takeaways
What I learned
Increase the frequency of interview and testing sessions to enhance product development. Address areas requiring improvement, notably the 'Daily Health' feature, which lacks relevance for certain users. Expand current features to cater to a broader range of user needs and preferences.
Next steps
Enhance user experience with expanded features. Strengthen the 'Alert' function in parental controls to send daily and weekly reports to parents via email. Introduce monetary penalties to enforce screen time limits effectively. Consider extending these features to more device types based on user feedback.