Time off: Designing lively representations as imaginative triggers for healthy smartphone use

Abstract

This paper describes the approach employed in an ongoing project aiming to foster healthy smartphone use via Time Off, a mobile application presenting an animated genie on the screen together with a physical jacket for the phone. The genie becomes tired and ill, when one spends prolonged time on the phone. Time Off demonstrates application of the liveliness framework, grounded in concepts from cognitive science including animacy and blending, to designing dynamic representations of behavioral data that stimulate users’ imagination of possible outcomes and reflection on the causes, highlighting the motivators for a change. We conduct a field trial with 14 participants for two to six weeks. Qualitative findings show that participants having intention to change expressed more levels of imagination and reflection. Their logged data also show reduction in length or frequency of use sessions, suggesting that lively representations can project a kind of imaginative trigger that motivates people.