From Awareness to Action: Ambient Display and Customizable Attention Signals for Self-regulated Smartphone Usage
People often use their phones longer than optimal. Researchers have developed various tools to reduce screen time, primarily using blocking or self-tracking and reflection strategies. However, blocking does not support the internalization of motivation, and self-tracking and reflection often lack constant exposure to tracking data. We propose ambient display, an always-on feedback mechanism, to convey self-tracking data and support reflection as a novel intervention for problematic smartphone usage. We report on the design and evaluation of TIMER, an Android app that displays the current session length and offers customizable attention signals to enhance the ambient display's noticeability when needed. Participants (N = 41) used TIMER for three weeks: no intervention in Week 1, ambient display in Week 2, and ambient display with attention signals in Week 3. We found that the ambient display reduced daily screen time by 38 minutes (10.7% of the baseline), and adding attention signals led to a further reduction of 32 minutes (9.0%). Participants reported improved competence in controlling smartphone usage, but their motivation did not change. While TIMER's simplicity and effectiveness in raising a wareness were well received, we explore ways to further enhance ambient displays and better support users' motivation.
More from our Archive
DOI: 10.1097/txd.0000000000001809 2025 Exploring the Role of Extracorporeal Photopheresis in Kidney Transplant Management Michael Nicoli, Jordi Rovira, Fritz Diekmann DOI: 10.1097/txd.0000000000001831 2025 Extracorporeal Photopheresis in Lung Transplantation: Present Applications and Emerging Research Sophia Alemanno, Peter Jaksch, Alberto Benazzo DOI: 10.1097/txd.0000000000001816 2025 ECP-induced Apoptosis: How Noninflammatory Cell Death Counterbalances Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury Julia Stępień, Elke Eggenhofer DOI: 10.1097/txd.0000000000001812 2025 Extracorporeal Photopheresis Stimulates Tissue Repair after Transplantation Fabiola Arella, Hans J. Schlitt, Paloma Riquelme DOI: 10.1097/txd.0000000000001817 2025 Potential Biomarkers of Therapeutic Response to ECP in Solid Organ Transplantation Hendrik Veltman, Eva Martinez-Caceres, Maria Iglesias-Escudero DOI: 10.1097/txd.0000000000001835 2025 Potential Impact of Extracorporeal Photopheresis on Trained Immunity and Organ Transplant Acceptance Clémentine Tocco, Jordi Ochando DOI: 10.1097/txd.0000000000001833 2025Extracorporeal Photopheresis in Solid Organ Transplantation: Modulating B-cell Responses to Improve Graft Survival
Filipe Nogueira, S. Marieke van Ham, Anja ten Brinke DOI: 10.1097/txd.0000000000001808 2025 Extracorporeal Photopheresis: Does It Have a Potential Place Among Cell-based Therapies? Panagiotis Parsonidis, Thomas Wekerle DOI: 10.1097/txd.0000000000001840 2025 Extracorporeal Photopheresis: Secreted Factors That Promote Immunomodulation Jorge H. Garcia-Almeida, Lukas Heger, Holger Hackstein DOI: 10.1063/5.0273277 2025 Affordable, manageable, practical, and scalable (AMPS) high-yield and high-gain inertial fusionAndrew Alexander, Laura Robin Benedetti, Indrani Bhattacharyya, Jared Bowen, June Cabatu, Virgil Cacdac, Chhavi Chhavi, Chiatai Chen, Karen Chen, Dan Clark, Jerry Clark, Tyler Cope, Will Dannemann, Scott Davidson, David DeHaan, John Dugan, Mindy Eihusen, C. Leland Ellison, Carlos Esquivel, David Ethridge, Blake Ferguson, Bryan Ferguson, Jon Fry, Fernando Garcia-Rubio, Tarun Goyal, Gary Grim, Justin Grodman, Ben Haid, Fred Howland, Van Huynh, Vishal John, Patrick Knapp, Isaac Kravitz, Eric S. Lander, Samuel Langendorf, Keith LeChien, Anthony Link, Nathan Meezan, Douglas S. Miller, Nantas Nardelli, Queenelle Ogirri, Jon He Peng, Alexander Pinto, Rudolph Powser, Fritz Roy Puno, Kenny Quang, Brett Rahn, Will Regan, Kelsey Reichenbach, Adam Reyes, Courtney Richardson, David Rose, Joseph Samaniego, Paul F. Schmit, Victor Silva, Nick Simon, Shiva Sitaraman, Hardeep Sullan, James Trebesch, Minh Truong, Carrie Von Muench, Cory Waltz, Doug Williams, Echo Wood, Sid Wu, Alex B. Zylstra
Outline
Metrics
Release Year: ISSN: 2474-9567 DOI: 10.1145/3749507- CiteDrive Companion for Chrome
- CiteDrive Companion for Firefox
- CiteDrive Companion for Edge
- Documentation
- Blog
- GitHub Discussions
- Terms and Conditions
- Privacy Policy
CiteDrive, INC - Made in Columbus, Ohio and Düsseldorf, Germany