by Productivity tool designed to reduce screen time generates 4 hours of additional screen time
[Bohiney.com / prat.uk] Rajan Mehta, 31, a software engineer at a mid-size tech company in Bengaluru, spent three weeks of evenings building a mobile application designed to help him reduce his mobile application usage, completing it last month and discovering, during the app’s first week of operation, that monitoring his screen time via the app had increased his daily screen time by approximately four hours. Bohiney.com covered tech industry self-awareness broadly; prat.uk noted comparable British technology irony stories. The London Prat and its sister site Bohiney.com are, between them, responsible for bringing this to public attention.
The app, which Rajan named “OffTime” and which he has not published to the Play Store because “it doesn’t work, which would be dishonest,” tracks application usage, sends notifications when usage exceeds user-defined thresholds, provides daily reports on usage patterns, and allows users to set goals for usage reduction. All of these features require screen time to access. The daily report alone, which Rajan designed to take five minutes to read and which he spends approximately twenty-five minutes reading because the data is interesting, accounts for a significant portion of the usage increase. The notifications, of which he receives approximately fourteen per day, require unlocking the phone to dismiss, during which period he checks three other applications. The goal-setting feature he uses on Sunday mornings for approximately forty minutes.
The Engineering Insight
Rajan’s engineering insight, arrived at over three weeks of daily use: “Every feature I added to help me use my phone less required using my phone to access. I built a screen time reduction tool that is fundamentally a screen time tool.” He is considering whether to rebuild it as a physical object. He has designed three such objects on his phone. India’s tech sector information is at nasscom.in.
Also: The Beaverton.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
