Phubbing? An absurd design intervention for redefining smart-phone usage

Abstract

This master’s thesis presents a design intervention aiming to redefine people’s smart-phone usage, preceded by an investigation into the present-day social issue of people’s high strivings. The aim of the thesis has been to explore how a design approach can contribute to improving people’s mental health, by means of interventions that support people in their daily lives. The project has been in cooperation with the Trimbos Institute, a centre of expertise on mental health, which develops and applies their knowledge for the benefit of the health of the Dutch population. Several developments in our performance-driven society - such as the growing number of people experiencing stress - indicate that people are often setting too high expectations for themselves and consequentially experience less subjective well-being. When people have multiple strivings that interfere with one another, e.g. meeting a deadline and spending time with friends, they experience conflicting life-goals. A framework has been developed summarizing the compentences people need to posess to constructively deal with conflicting life-goals. An essential competence is for people to questioning their own (limiting) convictions. Nowadays, people subconciously feel the need to be connected and are afraid of missing out. This conviction underlies people’s urge to compulsively check their mobile phone, also referred to as phubbing. The goal of this project has been to make people question whether they can miss out by making it feel absurd to constantly check your phone. The Attention Seekers is a set of interactive coasters that respond to mobile phone usage within its surroundings. A radio-frequency detector recognizes when mobile phones are being actively used and a small mechanism makes the coasters slowely move around, thereby playfully grabbing people’s attention. The device confronts people in social settings with their urge to constantly check and respond to messages. The absurd response of the device make people concious of their behaviour and reconsider the necessity of phubbing.