To say that the past few weeks have been crazy is trite, but also quite an understatement. From having so much to look forward to—people I’ve missed that I was finally able to see and spend time with, starting a new job… to canceled everything. It has honestly been challenging to focus on doing work, but I realized that I needed to confront these disappointments and anxieties before I can focus on doing work. Happy to say that I’ve made my peace with things lost, with not knowing, with things not being within my control — with doing my best with the cards that I have right now.
Highlights of these two weeks:
- Conducted usability/concept testings via Zoom (only managed to record one)
- Iterated based on their feedback
- Started high-fidelity screens

Usability Testing via Zoom
1. Do Not Disturb status
Previous version:

- Turn on Do Not Disturb
- Select Messages to snooze
Feedback — People were confused at what ‘Turn on Do Not Disturb’ would do, and was confusing it with the ‘Do Not Disturb’ function that Apple already has. (ie, Turning this on here, turns on Do Not Disturb for the phone, not just messages).
They also thought that the person at the receiving end of the snoozed messages might feel bad, or offended if found that their messages were being snoozed.
Iterated:


This setting can be adjusted in ‘Do Not Disturb’ in Settings. When turned on, other people can see a little moon ‘current Apple symbol for Do Not Disturb’, and a status message when one is trying to send a text to that person.
2. Timer for App Limit
Previous:

- A timer that tells people how long they have left when they’re in an application before the app limit is reached.
Feedback – people were talking about how they keep pressing the ‘Remind me in 15 minutes’ when their app limit is up, and wish they have this so they’re more intentional about how they use the remaining time they have.
“If I know I have 20 more minutes on Instagram, I would be more mindful about how I want to spend my time there. Do I want to spend time scrolling on this random person’s feed?”
Iterated

Fleshed it out so people can see how they’re able to do it (Settings), and how the timer will visually present itself.
3. Notification Limits
Previous:

- Set when and what notifications you want to receive
Feedback — The responses that I’ve gotten from these were either “I already do some form of this” or “OMG I want this now”. Concept and usability-wise, people knew what it did and how it worked. But upon studying Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, I realize that the name ‘Time Box’ doesn’t really feel very on-brand.
Iterated:

So instead of Time Box, I changed it to Notification Limits, as it felt more clear, concise and understandable.
On top of that, I’m also playing around with an idea about showing you how you’re doing with your app limits:

Based on my conversations with people, the thing that Screen Time isn’t doing right now is helping them understand their behavior. A 30% increase in screen time usage might not be bad because they might be doing something meaningful. The statistics that ST is currently giving them is either too broad, or not pointed enough that they can understand what the problem is.
So based on that, I wonder if putting an infographic of sorts like this, that tracks the “health” of your app limits, will help people understand what they’re doing that’s causing them to exceed the app limit — helping them gain awareness of their own behaviors but letting them have control on what action they want to take next with that given information.
With this, I have decided to wrap up my project and focus on packaging it — focusing my efforts on creating a highly polished prototype, and maybe a video of sorts that demonstrates everything.