Color-wall: Adaptive Color Filter to Reduce Digital Distractions during PC Work

Abstract

As the Attention Economy has grown, numerous digital contents are made with the intention of capturing users' attention and spending more of their time by the use of attractive graphics and color psychology. In this paper, we propose a novel defense strategy, called a color-wall, to block digital distraction brought on by the consumption of visually seductive and addictive digital content. When it detects that a user is viewing media or using applications unrelated to the main task, it removes colors from the screen (gray-scaling) to make them less aesthetically pleasing and directs the user away from looking at them. We implemented a mac OS software as a proof-of-concept for the color-wall and conducted user testing (N=14) to assess the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The evaluation results suggest that the color-wall is an effective strategy for reducing unwanted digital distractions such as browsing restricted content (YouTube, Twitter, etc.) while working on a PC.