People are spending too much time on smartphones. In order to address this issue, Google has launched what it’s calling Digital Wellbeing Experiments to reduce your smartphone use.
The Digital Wellbeing Experiments is a platform to encourage designers and developers to build digital wellbeing into their products.
Anyone can use the platform to share their ideas and experimental tools to help people find a better balance with technology.
While installing more apps in order to spend less time on your phone doesn’t sound right, it actually makes perfect sense.
We’re all spending time mindlessly scrolling through Twitter, watching random videos on YouTube, and playing addictive mobile games which could have been put to much better use. Google have noticed this issue and is trying to tackle it.
In a blog posted on Wednesday, Emma Turpin, Google Creative Lab’s team lead, said to help people find their balance with technology, they are making Digital Wellbeing a part of Google products, like Wind Down on Android and Take a Break reminder on YouTube.
5 Apps in Digital Wellbeing Experiments
To kick it off, Google created five digital wellbeing experimental apps. Each experiment centers around a different behavior, offering small ways to help improve your digital wellbeing and find a balance that feels right for you.
The first five Android apps are as follows:
- Unlock Clock: This is a Live Wallpaper that counts the number of times you unlock your phone in a day. You could try setting a limit to stop yourself from opening your phone at every opportunity.
- Post Box: This app enables you to get your notifications delivered in batches at a time that suits you. This will help minimize distractions, and prevent you from checking your phone every five minutes.
- We Flip: This is designed to help groups put their phones away and communicate with each other. You all join together and promise not to touch your phones. And as soon as someone does, the session ends.
- Desert Island: This app makes you choose the apps that are the most important to you. Once chosen, your challenge is to go a full 24 hours only using those apps, and none of the other, more distracting apps.
- Morph: This organizes your apps into different modes, such as Home and Work. Your phone will then automatically adapt to what you’re doing at that time, putting the apps you need front and center.
How to Create More
These are just the first five Digital Wellbeing Experiments. However, Google is likely to produce more, and it’s also inviting developers and designers to create their own.
Emma said in the post:
We’ve open-sourced the code and created guides for others to make their own experiments.
We hope these experiments inspire developers and designers to keep digital wellbeing top of mind when building technology.
The more people that get involved, the more we can all learn how to build better technology for everyone.
If you want to create your own experiment, You can get links to the Hack Pack and open source code on Experiments With Google.
