Summary:
The word “phubbing” is a combination of “phone” and “snubbing.” When someone phubs you, it means they ignore you by looking at their phone. We’ve all done it or had it done to us. In this challenge, you will design a smartphone solution that helps people monitor and manage their phubbing.
Scenario:
Smartphones are everywhere and for good reason: they make so many things in life easier. But many people are starting to worry that smartphones may be getting in the way of our relationships, especially when we phub. More and more people are looking for ways to manage their phubbing. Some companies now sell products designed to stop phubbing by keeping us from using our phones. Although these products might keep us from phubbing, they might also keep us from ever learning to manage our phubbing without them.
As long as there are smartphones, people will phub. Instead of products that try to stop phubbing by keeping people from using their phones, new products are needed that use smartphones to make people aware of their phubbing so that they can learn to manage it. These new products will need to collect data on phubbing behaviors and invent interesting ways to share those data with users.
It will be up to the product developers to decide what data they want to collect. They could rely on tech-features like app use, or eye-tracking. They could use peer-monitoring and rely on the user’s friends to report phubbing. They could even use self-monitoring and have users report on their own phubbing. Whatever data they collect, developers will need to find ways to present those data to users in ways that are quick and easy to read and interpret, and that are visually appealing.
Challenge:
Your challenge is to design an app that uses a data representation to help people manage their phubbing. Your app should:
- Be something customers will want to use.
- Collect data on a user’s phubbing behaviors (how will the app know when you’re phubbing?).
- Include an easy-to-interpret and useful representation of a user’s phubbing data.
- Allow users to set goals to reduce phubbing and monitor their progress towards those goals.
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