Redesign Samsung's Digital Wellbeing, provide users their digital devices' usage data in a more direct, timely and influential way.
Under pandemic, people started working at home and relying on digital technology to work and communicate much more than ever. However, many people have a hard time to adapt to this shift, complaining they are easy to get distracted. They also feel it's hard to be productive and balance their work and personal life.
Samsung wants to embrace the new normal and help people improve their productivity, especially for Gen Z. This project redesigned Samsung's Digital Wellbeing to:
Samsung's Digital Wellbeing offers users their screen time data to give them awareness, but...
Digital Wellbeing can only be found at settings, and it is turned off at the beginning. Most users don't know this function and never used before.
Current features can’t give users awareness in a comfortable way. Many users feel guilty or inconvenient when they are commanded to stop or see the system notifications.
Even users turn on Focus Mode functions like App Timer, they are inclined to choose 'Dismiss' directly when they get the reminder.
Current functions or applications which help people to be focused usually need users to set up functions in detail.
According to the 1st round research and the survey, more than 80% participants thinks they are easily get distracted by their smartphones, especially while working at home.
In fact, many smartphone producers and applications (e.g. Forest) have provide users some existing features to help them stay focused and use smartphones in a more health and productive way, like the screen time usage report, App timers, etc. Samsung also has the Digital Wellbeing, Focus Mode, Bedtime Mode and Bixby Routines, etc.
However, according my research, these features are not common used by users. Some people have tried such features but they usually give up quickly. So, why do users hardly use these features?
“I never used the screen time function before and never thought I use my smartphone that much... If there is a reminder that can let me know how much time I have cost on my smartphone, I won't use it that much."
“I want to become focused. But every time I see the reminder pop up and tell me it’s the time to stop, I just click ‘Dismiss’…”
“I would never use the default timer and focus mode on my phone. It just totally forbid any access to those applications, which is quite inconvenient and uncomfortable.”
“I have tried the App timer on my smartphone and found it’s too complex. I need to set timer for everything on the phone and it’s much effort…”
What people need is awareness, but current awareness has several limitations. According to the interview and co-design session, I found why people hardly use those features because:
The awareness provided by screen time report lacks findability. Current screen time report can only be found in Settings and hardly be opened and used. So, even the data is influential, people don’t know where to see them and hardly get this kind of awareness.
People need timely reminders when they have been distracted. Yet current reminders, like App Timers, are not influential enough. Many people would still choose ‘Dismiss’ when they see the reminder, and feel this feature is not useful enough.
Current features can’t give users awareness in a comfortable way. Most focus applications would totally forbid users to use applications, pop up sudden notification, make users feel guilty or be commanded to stop.
In the long term, users might won't cost much effort to set up functions in detail, use a certain tool, keep a routine or form a habit.
Where are users' painpoints and requirements, there exists design opportunities. Broke down the whole task and combined the insights from researches, I got 4 design goals:
Make the smartphone usage data easy to find.
Make the awareness more timely and influential.
Provide people awareness in a more flexible and natural way. Make them spontaneously think their behaviour instead of forcing them to stop.
Make the awareness easy to get. Everyone should have the opportunity to get the impact without much settings.
According to most records in diary study, I got the common journey of how people got distracted by their smartphones. Among all the steps, I found two touch points that people connect with their phones. There exist design opportunities to give people awareness.
I was inspired by other applications which also aim to help people generate a habit and motivate them to continue -- the exercise applications. These applications have common features:
Though some users may also ignore these data, but it would be a chance for them to think about whether they are supposed to unlock the phone. And since it’s always on the lock screen, this feature would also have opportunity to impact everyone.
I also changed few parts of the Digital Wellbeing, Dashboard, screen time data and weekly report page to give people more awareness.
As UX designers, we always need to pay much attention on users' experiences and try to achieve user-centered design. However, in the industry, we also need to consider the commercial goals, business values, budget and development cost, etc.
Therefore, creating new applications or adding new functions are not always better ways to improve current situations. We should also think about and utilize what the product already have, view the design from the whole project's perspective to save development cost and keep product's consistency.
In the industry, every small changes and design features should be convincing and reasonable. It's not just a flash of insight, but also needs enough research data to support it. A small change can also impact a lot of users.
Users build their usage habit during their past long term experience. When we try to persuade users gain new habits and have new behaviors, it might be a process which against their original habits and cause unpleasant experiences. We should think design in a long term, give users choices, or simplify the change to make it easy and simple enough.