Time•Cage

ui+ux
passion project

PROBLEM
While internet and various mobile applications are connecting people beyond boundaries, the overuse of them is causing face-to-face interactions diminish and lose value in real life.

SOLUTION
Using a fun metaphor of a bird cage, the application enables users to lock applications on their friends’ and their own phones using a “time cage” while they are together. The application seeks to promote real-life interactions between people with increased productivity and collection of memories.

Values: accountability; connection; communication; collaboration; productivity; relationship

Being given the project to design an application that requires a collaborative experience, the first step was to define what collaboration is. Key words that came to mind were togetherness, coordination, mutuality, and relationship.

A big problem I observed in a “together” experience was that mobile devices are hindering the value of building relationships and spending quality time together. This led me to think further how people handle these moments of distraction and what could help in eliminating the problem to encourage more face-to-face interaction. 

In determining who my users would be, some questions I asked:

What kind of relationships require people to spend time together?
What groups of people are most active on social media? (and other app categories?)
Who might observe and experience the frustrations associated with high phone-usage?
Who would benefit from phone restriction?

Once each persona was defined, it was found that each one uses their device for different purposes. Nevertheless, these personas could be clearly classified into two types of users: those who are directly consumed by their device and those who are affected indirectly by others’ phone usage.

To identify specific frustrations and needs of the personas, five stages of experience of the two different types of personas were mapped (5E Experience Model): Jade, who is an Instagram-blogger, and Ben, whose wife is constantly on her phone over meals.

Interestingly enough, although the two personas have different feelings towards their phones, the path of their journeys and points of frustrations match. In both cases, negative emotions are developed when phone usage becomes dominant over face-to-face conversation.

Once the problems and needs were found, open card sorting was used to understand how individuals understand and group mobile apps. 

A list of 30 top-used applications was given to 10 participants for them to sort and form into groups according to what made the most sense to them. The results were helpful in understanding how users relate different applications and identifying what categories should be named in Time•Cage.

Based on the dendrogram above, the study suggests grouping applications in categories of:

Games
Music / Video / Entertainment
Shopping
Social Media / Communications
Basic / Essentials / Productivity

Being an “anti-phone" application, there was the challenge of getting users enticed and to feel comfortable using the app.

To eliminate any sense of reluctance, a yellow and orange color palette was used to convey happiness and invitation. Using imagery of a bird in a cage was appropriate in both the context of the app’s function and creating an approachable and friendly image.

Along with the visual elements, a game-like language was used to make users comfortable while creating a fun, interactive experience.

Building the app based on my research, the key functions I chose to include were to:

1. request to lock other user’s apps (by categories)

2. form groups of users for a group lock system

3. summarize progress to encourage the user to reflect on how they spent their time away from their phones

Overall, the content and the layout were organized and designed for fast and easy usability, ultimately to provide users a way to recover the true value of spending quality time and enriching relationships with people around them in the present moment.