Concept Proposal
As the usage of mobile phones increased over the years, it has become apparent that users, specifically children or teenagers use it more than any other age group. This is partly due to early exposure to mobile phones in their childhoods (Cho & Lee, 2017), which can lead to addiction. For this reason, our team is focusing on intervening during their adolescent years, where we seek to teach them better time management which should consequently counter any lead-up to a mobile addiction.
This proposal identifies our domain space, and conducts research in the following specified areas: what mobile addiction is, the impacts of mobile addiction, attempted solutions, and gamification.
This project aims to teach teenagers time management skills through a gamified experience, with some parental guidance. Our proposed solution comes in the form of an android mobile app aimed at teenagers and young adults. This app is intended to help a mobile addict improve their time management by giving them an overview of their usage patterns, utilising gamification methods to reward good behaviours, and enabling lockdowns of specific apps.
The team has decided on a set of goals that we wish to achieve together by the end of semester. The team aims to produce a proof-of-concept prototype, meaning some functions work whilst others may be simulated such as signup and login. The team also wishes to further their design and research skills through iteration and user testing. Likewise, the team also wants to hone their coding skills as no one is confident in having mastered them. Finally, the team wants to design and prototype an app which will achieve the designed purpose as well as stand out from similar apps.
Mobile addiction is a complex behaviour where a person relies heavily on their mobile devices and smartphones, possibly to distract themselves from internal discomfort, despite being aware of the negative impact it potentially has on their mental health and general well-being (Goodman, 1990). Mobile phone addiction is associated with different factors such as personal habits and loneliness (Salehan & Negahban, 2013). Symptoms that indicate mobile phone addiction can be feeling uncomfortable and irritated when mobile phone is not accessible (Salehan & Negahban, 2013) and repetitive checking of the mobile (Löchtefeld, Böhmer, & Ganev, 2013). Mobile phone overuse is when the user utilizes the device almost obsessively such as constantly checking their phone or using it as a distraction from boredom (Campbell, 2018). However, it is not to the point of addiction where the user would exhibit withdrawal symptoms or have a dependency on it.
Mobile overuse and addiction affects people of all ages; from kids ages 1 to 6 (Cho & Lee, 2017) all the way to teenagers and adults from ages 18 to 30 (Salehan & Negahban, 2013). Children are more likely to be addicted due to their exposure at a young age as parents use devices to distract the children (Cho & Lee, 2017) whilst teenagers and adults are more likely to be addicted due to SNS (Salehan & Negahban, 2013). For children, excessive use of mobile devices was found to have negative effects on learning behavior (Kim, Lee, & Choi, 2015). Overuse of mobile phones was found to be correlated to the parent’s attitudes as “elementary students who perceived their mothers’ child-rearing attitude as harsh and regulative were more likely to overuse their mobiles, whereas elementary students who perceived their mothers’ child-rearing attitude as warm and permissive were more likely to practice self-control with their device” (Kim, Lee, & Choi, 2015).
A study done in 2013 by Salehan & Negahban suggests that social networking services (SNS), network size (number of friends / acquaintances) and SNS intensity are causes of mobile addiction, as well as accurate predictors of mobile addiction (Salehan & Negahban, 2013). This means that while SNS usage increases, the network size increases too. This increase of SNS usage results in a higher SNS intensity and thus can be an indicator of mobile addiction. It has also been shown that the larger the social network a user has, the longer they spend on their phones socializing (Salehan & Negahban, 2013). This is especially evident in our target user base, since mobile phones are important tools for maintaining social relationships (Roberts, Petnji, & Manolis, 2014).
Another factor that contributes to mobile addiction is personality aspect; Roberts, Pullig, and Manolis (2015) found that people who lacked planning skills, tended to act on impulse, or were unable to focus were the most susceptible to being addicted to their devices. In fact, attention impulsiveness proved to be the strongest point amongst the three (Roberts, Pullig, & Manolis, 2015). Aside from personality aspects, studies have also found a connection between stress and mobile addiction. Liu, Zhang, Yang, Zhang, Fan, & Zhou (2018) examined the relationship between mobile addiction and self control, perceived stress, and mindfulness in high school students; they found that mindfulness indirectly regulates self control, directly affects mobile addiction, and has a direct correlation to stress. Hence, solutions attempting to combat mobile addiction should consider the impact self-control and mindfulness has on an individual.
There are good and bad effects that stem from mobile addiction, the latter outweighing the former significantly. The only positive impact mobile addiction has on users that researchers have found is that addicts tend to have better sleep quality (Liu, Zhou, Yang, Kong, Niu, G., & Fan, 2017). However, for the purpose of this project, we will be focusing on the negative impacts mobile addiction has on users.
Mobile addiction has a significant impact on students’ ability to learn. Kuznekoff, J., Titsworth, & S (2013) claims that digital communication (texting and using social media) has affects students’ ability to take notes, recalling taught content, and examination-styled assessments. The results of their investigation show that the usage of mobile devices throughout classes to take notes while lectures took place, hindered the learning process. This is attributed to the students’ divided attention as they are simultaneously engaging in multiple tasks, which lead them to miss out on critical points throughout the course. The authors acknowledged mobile devices as a source of distraction when used in a learning environment.
In terms of cognitive ability, a research paper on exploring the connection between mobile technology habits and cognitive function, tries to highlight the ability such technologies have on augmenting our lifestyles and the repercussions of using them without any form of restraint. The paper states that smartphones are powerful tools with a myriad of functionalities that have the capacity and potential to make our lives easier (Wilmer, H., Sherman, L., Chein, J. ,2017). However, unrestrained usage may result in increased dependence on these devices as well as addiction. That being said, issues such as depression and insomnia are also likely to occur due to overuse of such devices. Thus, it is apparent that prolonged unchecked usage of devices such as these will ultimately result in the deterioration of one’s cognitive abilities.
Mobile addiction can also have a negative impact on a user’s physical health. Researchers found that excessive use of mobile devices led to pain in users’ hands and wrists, which could ultimately lead to worse physical conditions if left neglected (Parasuraman, Sam, Yee, Chuon, B, & Ren, 2017). In addition to hand and wrist pain, studies have also shown that excessive use of devices can cause eye and muscle problems, and in extreme cases, auditory delusions that make it difficult to concentrate. For students, this can be extremely concerning since it would interfere with their learning in school and consequently affect their futures. Miakotko (2017) conducted some tests with cellphone users and found that they complained of discomfort in area of upper extremities, back, and neck. His study also found that long term excessive usage of hand-held devices could also lead to “texter’s thumb” or “texter’s neck”. The former refers to the aftereffect of using thumbs for sending messages, and the latter refers to neck pain caused by prolonged poor posture while using a mobile phone (Miatotko, 2017). Clearly, these two conditions can be observed in teenagers, and because they are still young with many years ahead of them, this further proves the need to combat this problem.
Excessive usage of mobile devices can lead a user to engage the behaviour of “partner phubbing”. Phubbing refers to when an individual chooses to use, or is distracted by their mobile phones while in presence of their partners, friends, or families (Roberts & David, 2016). Phubbing has been found to be a common occurrence in modern day relationships and through the researchers’ studies, phubbing was found to impact relationship satisfaction as well as personal well-being. Relationship satisfaction requires not only the presence of both parties, but also a connection between them (Leggett & Rossouw, 2014). Hence it is clear that distractions caused by phubbing could threaten relationship satisfaction. As this behaviour extends to every aspect of a user’s social life, it lead to more severe consequences such as “forgetting” how to socialise face-to-face, distancing oneself from their communities, and eventually substituting real relationships with virtual relationships.
As teenagers are young and impressionable, having limited social support and lacking social skills can result in them being outcasted from society, or cause them to develop mental illnesses in future. One instance of this is social interaction anxiety, which is characterized as the extreme fear of social situations or interactions with others, and of being judged by or scrutinized by others, especially when amongst strangers in public. The fact that online interactions provide lowered social anxiety compared to real life interactions, makes it a useful alternative for people living with social anxiety to carry out interactions in a less direct manner. However, this in itself may very well result in the overdependence and overuse of smartphones, which ultimately leads to social isolation and withdrawal (Lee, Chang, Lin, & Cheng, 2014).
Lee, Chang, Lin, and Cheng (2014) investigated the dark side of compulsive smartphone usage, and their study indicated that certain negative psychological traits and compulsive behaviours, and technostress are likely to occur in people who are too attached to their mobile devices. Such traits include (but are not limited to) social anxiety, locus of control, materialism, as well as the need for touch. Technostress can be described as a form of modern stress that is induced by the inability to adapt/cope with new technologies in a healthy manner (Lee, Chang, Lin, & Cheng, 2014). The following diagram outlines the factors of technostress.
The need for touch and social interaction anxiety are motivators for smartphone usage and the pleasure obtained from it, which in turn increases the reliance on smartphones. On the other hand, materialism and locus of control are personality traits that aid in explaining compulsive behaviour. In addition to that, both social interaction anxiety and the need for touch act as predictors of compulsive behaviour, which is described as an anxiety reliever and a source of gratification. Locus of control is known as the extent of an individual’s belief in their ability to affect the outcome of events through their own actions. There exists two forms of locus of control; internal and external. The former states that the occurrence of events and behaviours are influenced by one’s personal decisions and efforts (internal forces) within their lives, whereas the latter is the belief that events are not within one’s control, but of external forces. It is stated that people with stronger tendency towards external locus of control tend to exhibit increased compulsive mobile phone usage, as they believe that nothing is really under their control, ergo they do not look for ways to curb their excessive mobile phone usage (Lee, Chang, Lin, & Cheng, 2014).
Lee, Change, Lin, and Chang (2014) also determined that compulsive mobile phone usage was defined by how frequently users checked on their mobile phones. People who exhibit this behaviour find it difficult to control the amount of time they spend on their devices and are also easily distracted by them. Furthermore, compulsive users also show signs of restlessness when attempting to curb their usage, and worsening of significant relationships with people around them. The consequences of which, is psychological distress such as depression, stress, and the feeling of isolation (Lee, Chang, Lin, & Cheng, 2014). Finally, the researchers concluded that all four factors mentioned have to be kept in check by smartphone users, so as to strike a balance between using their devices and living their lives to the fullest, without jeopardizing their health or relationships. It was also determined that external locus of control and materialism seem to be the most influential factors leading to compulsive usage of smartphones, of which will be taken into consideration when designing for a solution.
There are several existing apps on the iOS app store and Google Play store that are similar to our project, however the purpose of their app is significantly different to what our team is proposing. Nevertheless, they are worth analysing as our target audience is similar, and we share certain design elements and gamification components. Six apps falling under two different categories, will be analysed to determine what components and elements contributed to its success or failure.
ScreenTime, FamilyTime, and Parental Control & Kid Tracker are apps that appear to be designed for parents who want to have control over their children’s devices, and wish to monitor their every movement. The following table displays the functionalities that these 3 apps offer (from the parent’s device).
Common functionality include an overview of their child’s app usage, and scheduling of screen time allowances, as well as specific app blockers, and instant app lockdowns. These functionalities provide parents with the ability to monitor, and limit their child from overusing their device. More controlling and excessively invasive functionalities include remotely viewing of text messages, viewing of web and search history, enabling a contacts watchlist (with alerts), and even location geofences, which are virtual Geo-fences around places you want alerts when your child checks in or out from.
These apps aim to give parents a full access to their children’s lifestyle habits, and are effective in doing so. Parents are able to see graphs and charts of their child’s usage habits, information which can help them make better decisions for their child. Parents can also control what their child has access to, and block or limit excessive use of certain apps or inappropriate websites. Having the power of monitoring and controlling makes these apps sound perfect in theory, however they prove to be a double edged sword in reality. Feedback from users were generally of two types: it was a success and their kids had “learnt”, or that it successfully did what it set out to do, but hurt the relationship between parent and child. These apps adopt a very “authoritarian” method of parenting, and perhaps if the child was young enough, they would not care about the privacy invasive functionalities. However for teenagers, this invasion into their privacy is seen as a lack of trust and respect. This consequently causes the teen to keep everything to themselves, and avoid their parents. It has also been found that teenagers who are parented in an authoritarian style are more likely to have low self esteem, behavioural problems, and are at a greater risk of depression (Hopper-losenicky, 2010). Regardless, these apps stand to serve as an extensive guideline for our team to ensure that the design decisions that we make do not fall short of our goals.
SPACE, Hold, and Forest are apps that aim to persuade users into adopting a certain behaviour through the use of gamification. These apps use gamification to make the process of correcting a behaviour enjoyable, and is targeted at anyone who wants to change but needs some help. Common gamification elements that have been employed are points, badges, leaderboards, and progress charts.
SPACE and Hold track the time a user spends on their phone and seeks to reduce it through goal setting and rewarding good behaviour. Users can see an overview of their time spent on their phones, enabling them to receive feedback on their progress and set goals for themselves. Both apps also have a leaderboard for users to compare progress with friends’, which enable friendly competition and push users to achieve goals. However, users are rewarded differently for both apps; SPACE rewards users with badges and “collectibles”, whereas Hold rewards users with achievement points. When SPACE users reduce the time spent on their phone, they are rewarded with a space element that they can add to their universe. Overtime, their universe builds up with numerous animated space elements which can be very satisfying to watch. SPACE users also get badges once they have collected a certain number of specific elements, which provide as a social status symbol and visual representation of their accomplishments. Hold users get 1 point for every 20 minutes they stay away from their phone, which can then be accumulated and traded for things with monetary value in the real world such as coupons, a free drink, or meal. Hold is targeted at university students who are attracted to “free” and “discounted” items hence this attractive reward acts as a motivation for users to achieve their goals.
Forest utilizes many elements of gamification similar to SPACE and Hold, although it has the special functionality of allowing users to “log” tasks completed. Users set a timer for the duration they want to stay away from their phone to do other, more productive, tasks and plant a digital tree in their forest during that period. Once the timer is up, the user gets a full grown tree in their forest (a collectible), and they can give that duration a name e.g. “Homework”. Users can even add tags to their logged moments which is then translated into a pie chart that details their habits. For all these logged moments, Forest users earn badges and points, of which the latter can be used to unlock new species of trees (achievements) to plant in-game, or to plant trees in real life. Forest, albeit similar to Hold in this last aspect, converts in-game points to rewards in the real world that is not directly self-beneficial. Rather, users get a sense of fulfilment from having planted a tree in the real world, contributing to the efforts to combat climate change in their own way.
These three apps use appealing themes, attractive rewards, and a sense of fulfilment to persuade them to change their habits. Our project mission aligns with these three apps, where our app is not a tool for parents to monitor and control their child, but instead a tool that seeks to gently persuade children to change their behaviours (with some guidance from their parents). Hence our proposed solution will use gamification in a similar fashion, but catered to the specific needs and wants of our target audience - teenagers.
Gamification is the method of using components of game theory to suggest and encourage active participation and behaviours that are rewarded when performed by the user (Pellikka, n.d.). Gamification aims to “support the user's overall value creation by providing gameful experiences” which overlaps with some persuasive technologies, which aims to alter users' attitudes and behavior (Hamari & Koivisto, 2013). As our app is targeted towards teenagers, our proposed solution utilizes gamification through a leaderboard (between friends), badges, achievement points, and rewards (time allowance).
Badges are digital objects awarded to users who complete specific tasks, similar to how medals are awarded to champions. Antin and Churchill (2011) state that badges have 5 primary functions: goal setting, instruction, reputation, affirmation, and group identification. For our project, badges challenge users to achieve the goals required to achieve the badge, and inform users about the activities that are available within the app. Badges also work as a status symbol and “communicate a set of shared activities that bind a group of users together” (Antin & Churchill, 2011). Combined with a scoreboard in the app, badges provide personal affirmation by showing a user’s total achievements (Anderson, Huttenlocher, Kleinberg & Leskovec, 2013), which can provide as a strong motivation for teenagers to engage in good behaviour.
The allure of games, as stated by Taylor and Francis (2014), is self-efficacy - the ability to earn points through completing tasks and achievements. Achievement points in the app, although non exchangeable for things of value in the real world, provide users with a sense of accomplishment which can drive them to achieve their goals. Rewarding users provides feedback about their progress, and also trigger some friendly competition among friends (Richter, Raban, & Rafaeli, 2015).
There have been debates arguing that users could explicitly want to complete all the achievements, hence making that their primary goal instead of focusing on their initial goals (Pellikka, n.d.). To ensure that this is not a frequent occurrence within our user base, the team has come up with multiple countermeasures that could potentially solve the issue of addiction towards our app. Such measures include a limit on daily rewards, and back-end monitoring. In terms of daily limits, we plan on implementing a fixed limit to the total number of activities a user can complete each day. By doing so, we believe that it would deter addiction towards using the app, as there would be less incentive to visit it once the daily limit has been achieved. Whereas with back-end monitoring, the team would be able to better understand our user base through the identification of the most frequently used/visited elements within the app. That way, we can make adjustments (if necessary) to the app throughout its lifespan, to ensure that users will continue to use it effectively.
There are currently a range of applications(apps) that are available on the market but they have several aspects that may not be too appealing such as too controlling on the user in the aspect that it monitors them and tracks them or that it gamifies the experience too much which may lead to addiction of the app. Presently, there is no app that would suit the specific needs or produce the effect that we want.
The aim of this project is to teach time management, which should consequently reduce the overall time a user spends on their phone. Our target audience is young teenagers. The reason for targeting a younger audience is that it is easier to change their behavior as they are more easily influenced than adults. Our app is not targeted towards children since their parents can take away the device if this problem (overuse/addiction) is apparent, solving the problem immediately. As for adults, there are current existing apps that have similar functions but don’t gamify the experience as much, giving it a more formal or proper feel. As our team aims to change a user’s behaviour by reducing their mobile phone usage and encouraging time management, this project can be classified as persuasive technology.
This app will have the following functionalities:
- Family management/overview system
- Parents are able to view their child’s progress and usage patterns
- Parents are able to set the amount of time as rewards
- Parents cannot directly lock the phone, it will only lock once the allocated time has been used up.
- Ability for child to set tasks that they wish to complete
- Time allocation (to promote better time management)
- The child will start off with a specified time allowance for the week
- Tasks completed that reward the child with time will add on to this allowance
- Reward system
- Instant rewards: time to use/unlock specific apps
- Long term rewards: badges / achievement points
- Scoreboard amongst friends
- Weekly overview of most used apps
- App usage tracking (for parents to identify their child’s habits)
- Specific app lockdowns
The UI of our mobile application will be a minimalist design style, which allows the user to easily retrieve and navigate to the most relevant information effectively with minimal use of graphical elements. Our application will follow this guideline which will use clear and concise headlines, simple and basic icons, colour extraction and negative space to create a minimal look.
In this phase, the team will extensively and rigorously research on our domain/problem space. This is to ensure the team gains a better understanding of the domain and potential solutions. Research will be obtained through journal articles, observations and user testing. This phase is vital as it forms the basis of the project.
Industry Research Industry Research is conducted to discover what current apps are available, and their pros and cons. We can look into the strengths and weaknesses of each app and focus on what they are doing well, how they are doing it, and why they do it that way, or what they aren’t doing so well in. This will give us an indicator on what we should focus on, avoid or pay more attention to. Industry research is needed to ensure that we are not designing something that already exists as well as to figure out ways in which we can differentiate ourselves from a sea of similar apps.
User Research User research is important as it concerns our target audience. The project must be designed in a way that will appeal to our target users otherwise our app may fail. To do so, we need to find out the wants and needs of our audience, which for our case is teenagers. Potential areas that we can look into is what apps they use, how they use it, why they use it and when they use it, as well as what appeals to them in functionalities and design. Furthermore we can also look at reviews that users have done on similar apps. This will give us a gauge on what users dislike and like about certain apps.
The requirements and design will stem from the research. These include aspects such as what functions should be included or excluded as well as how the app should work and look. This phase will decide what needs to be done in regards to building the prototype. Although data from the initial research phase can be used, the design should not be based solely on it. Primary research for requirements and design can be gathered through methods such as surveys and interviews.
Surveys Surveys are a cheap and inexpensive method of gathering data. They are also fast to make and have a wide reach as it can be done online or in real life. The survey can be used to gain an understanding of what apps have been used and their experiences with it. Ideally, the surveys would be completed by those in our target audience. However, the downside may be a low response rate.
Interviews Interviews can serve the same purpose as surveys but it is more costly and takes more time. However, the data gained can also be more in depth and detailed. Interviews can be in groups or individuals and formal or informal. Interviews can prove to be useful as the interviewees may expand more on their experiences in a interview than opposed to a survey. They also usually achieve a higher response rate than surveys.
Design The designing aspect of this phase will consist of establishing a set of requirements that we have determined from using the data gained during our research phase. The design will consider multiple factors such as the functionalities that should be included, what the UI should look like, and interaction types (touch, tap, drag, etc). The initial concept of the design will have wireframes made. If user testing goes well, it would then be made into a prototype which would then be iterated through several times.
The iteration and evaluation phase will mainly consist of user testing, data analysis and making changes to our prototype. The prototypes will be user tested, which will give us an indicator on how the design and functions of the apps were perceived by the users. The results would then be analysed to determine what was done “right” and “wrong” with respect to achieving our intended goal. Changes would then be made accordingly, and this process will be done multiple times to refine our project.
At the end of each user testing, feedback will be gathered and analysed. The feedback would then be implemented appropriately and more testing will be done. The first iteration of the project will be a low fidelity prototype in which wireframes will demonstrate to users a general overview of what the proposed app would look like, and do. Many of the functionalities may be simulated at first however through each iteration, more functionalities may be added and tested.
The final prototype that our team will deliver is a proof-of-concept prototype, with both functional and simulated aspects. Thus, it needs to be a high fidelity prototype which should give the users an accurate feel of what the app can do and how it would look. The user experience with our final prototype should be as close to the user experience with an identical, fully functional app. This can be achieved through a combination of coding the actual functions and prototyping resources such as InVision or Marvel.
We are a team of like minded people with the same goals for this project, each of us with a wide range of skills that overlap. For this reason, this team has no team leader. Instead of having explicit delegation of work, our team has adopted the scrum method where the team decides on a set of tasks that need to be completed and members assign tasks to themselves on their own accord. This method allows members to pick tasks that appeal to them the most, or align with their skillset, and contribute to the project effectively.
Kevin Ong Kevin is a 3rd year Bachelor’s of IT student with a foundation in mostly front-end programming (Java, HTML and Python). However, throughout his years of study, he has found a particular fondness towards User Experience Design. He believes that the success of any system relies heavily on the design decisions that are made behind the curtains, and that only through extensive user testing and requirements gathering, would creators and developers be able to make something that stands out from the crowd. By undertaking this course, Kevin hopes to hone his UX craftsmanship, as well as his ability to work with others who are also striving towards a similar goal.
Nicholas Tran Nick is studying multimedia design, and his main focus is on user experience and design. He thinks that the project would require extensive research and testing as we would have to design and create a prototype for a specific target group. However, for the prototype, he believes that it will make use of all the skills that he has learnt in previous courses. Throughout this course, he hopes to practice and advance his UX design skills through user testing and user research.
Winifred Liang Winifred is studying Software Engineering and has some experience in backend programming, as well as database management. She has never done courses that required explicit research work to be done, hence she intends to learn as many skills as she can in research. This includes sourcing for quality papers, knowing what tools to use for citation and bibliography, and being able to pull out relevant information from an article that supports her research. She also hopes to achieve a better understanding of design through this project. There are many theories and rules when it comes to designing for human-computer interaction that she is unaware of, and she intends to learn and use this knowledge for her future projects in developing software.
Weng Lam Sek Weng Lam is majoring in User Experience Design. She believes that by being involved in plenty of in-depth research, it would prove to be useful in ascertaining and understanding the user base and their requirements in order to better design and provide them with the best user experience possible. Therefore, throughout this course, she hopes that she is able to practice her UX design skills that she has learnt from previous courses, which are user testing, prototyping, graphic design, human-computer interaction theories, user-centered research, and evaluation. Although she is not a programmer, she is willing to try to learn and improve her programming skills in this course, and she plans to do her best to collaborate with the team and contribute to the project.
The following table describes the softwares that our team will be using, with a brief description of their purpose.
The team will also be making use of the weekly practical and workshop sessions to meet up, discuss, and work on the project. The following table provides details of these weekly sessions
5.2.1.1 Team Our team comprises of 4 members, with skills ranging from database management, front-end and back-end programming to UX design, user-based research and testing. The strength of our team is that we all have previous knowledge from previous courses, so aspects such as user search, UX design, user testing or prototyping are not new to us. This allows us to work faster and effectively as everyone is clear on what needs to be done and how. Moreover, team members have prior experience in using the resources shown in the table in 5.2.1.2 to create prototypes. Team members also have no personality clashes and are all very supportive of one another, offering to help when another teammate is stuck on a problem.
5.2.1.2 Project Since our target audience is primarily young teenagers, there are a plethora of existing research revolving around mobile phone addiction and its effects, thus providing us with plenty of resources for our domain research. These resources aid in the brainstorming process and allow for further investigation into the issues through the many insights that come from different perspectives with regard to mobile phone addiction. This in turn leads to a more holistic approach when it comes to the design and development of our proposed app. Also, through the use of this data, it will help us in refining our project to appeal to teenagers (functionality-wise and aesthetically). Most importantly, the research data provides us with a deeper understanding of user behaviours and intentions when using similar existing applications.
Another strength would be the fact that there are numerous apps similar to our apps, which allows us to see what current apps have done and how users have reacted to them through reviews or forum discussions. We can learn from their “mistakes” through observing which components appeal and don’t to the users.
5.2.2.1 Team Good teamwork is vital to a successful project and it is important that our team has a clear goal in mind, and that we all understand the current situation before moving onto the next phase in the project. Since all members are from different majors and backgrounds, it can be difficult to avoid arising conflicts with the team. To counter this, our team has come up with a communication agreement and a conflict resolution agreement in our team contract.
5.2.2.2 Project The main challenge of this project is user testing as our target audience are young teenagers. If user testing were to be done, say in a school environment, then special permissions and parental consent may be required. There are also time constraints for this project. As the time given for design and prototyping is quite short, there may not be enough time for each team member to learn and develop the new skills required to build a functional prototype.
5.2.3.1 Team As mentioned previously, due to the time constraint, our team risks being unable to achieve some of our goals. Specifically, that team members are unable to learn and advance the skills they want. On the other hand, in the event the time constraint does not affect us at all, team members have the opportunity to gain new skills and hone existing ones.
5.2.3.2 Project After doing some research and data gathering for our project, we will produce different prototypes and test them. Since the prototype may not be fully functional and contain minimal features, there will be an opportunity to further develop our product and sell to the market. Although this project has considered the target user carefully when designing and meeting user needs, our team still runs the risk of having the product fail since it is extremely difficult to guarantee that the product will be successful in the open market.
Although our prototype will be a human-centered design, users may not respond to the app as expected by our team. Users may not be able to fully appreciate the functionalities without a fully functional app where they can add their own tasks and see for themselves how useful it could be. This should be mitigated with a fully functional app, however users may also find that our app does not suit their specific needs and hence uninstall or not use it at all.
Anderson, A., Huttenlocher, D., Kleinberg, J., & Leskovec, J. (2013). Steering user behavior with badges. Paper presented at the 22nd international conference on World Wide Web, Rio de Janeiro.
Antin, J., & Churchill, E. F. (2011). Badges in social media: A social psychological perspective. In CHI 2011 Gamification Workshop Proceedings (Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2011).
Campbell, A. (n.d.). No, you’re probably not “addicted” to your smartphone – but you might use it too much. Retrieved August 30, 2018, from http://theconversation.com/no-youre-probably-not-addicted-to-your-smartphone-but-you-might-use-it-too-much-89853
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Hamari, Juho & Koivisto, Jonna. (2013). Social motivations to use gamification: An empirical study of gamifying exercise. ECIS 2013 - Proceedings of the 21st European Conference on Information Systems.
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