
Can developers combat smartphone addiction?
It’s no secret that technology is designed to be addictive, but should developers be more ethical in their approach to UX?
Apps rely on user addiction in order to think of themselves as successful. For example, developers will often rank an app’s success based on user engagement, or how much time users spend interacting with a site or application. The more time, the better and the more addicted, the more time. Hence, apps are designed to make you as addicted as possible.AA – Apps Anonymous
Reward-motivated behaviour keeps us hooked. While usually associated with rats, buttons and food delivered at variable intervals, fundamentally it’s the same thing. The only difference is that we are the rats, and notifications are our treats.

Source: Thrive Global
You just need some Space
Tristan Harris, founder of Time Well Spent and previously Design Ethicist for Google, thinks it’s up to developers to create more ethical software. Criticising the attention economy and technology companies for exploiting our pyschological vulnerabilities, he believes in designers adopting a Hippocratic Oath to restore agency and freewill to users. He told Wired: “Right now when you wake up in the morning it’s like every app is still competing all at once for your attention. Netflix and Facebook and YouTube want your attention just as much as the morning meditation apps. “Imagine if there were zoning laws…So when you wake up, you’d see a morning home screen, in which things compete to help you wake up, which could include there being nothing on there at all.” The idea is that users would be encouraged and free to do what’s best for them in the morning, rather than being driven to check Facebook and Twitter by notifications. But while ‘zoning laws’ would work, this is down to companies like Apple and Google who design the operating systems rather than the apps. A new app has been designed to help combat addiction yet, ironically, it’s from the same company that has perfected the art of creating it. Dopamine Labs’ API is the few lines of code responsible for holding back those Instagram likes and delivering them at just the right moment. The same start-up has developed an app that works as a kind of anti-dopamine – Space. Space delays the moment of gratification by bringing up a breathing prompt when you try and open the likes of Facebook or Snapchat.
Source: Dopamine Labs
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