OVERVIEW
DOMAIN
Problem Solving / UX Design
WAIT is a plugin designed to reduce the unnoticed wasted time spent on social media apps. We take WeChat as an example for the prototype.
TOOL
HTML / CSS / Figma / User Research
ROLE (Team size 3)
Problem Analysis / User Research / Prototype Design
Problem
You see a message from one of your friends. You pick up your phone, reply to the message, looking at the half-finished essay, thinking you just need a mini 5 min break.
Good plan, in-time action, nightfall.
Mobile phone users can find it hard to focus on their own work when they need to. They frequently check social media apps and spend an amount of time unconsciously on social media apps and then regret it.
WAIT is designed to solve this problem.
Problem Verification
( User Research )
We want to know if spending time purposelessly using social media apps is a real problem for users. We first made a poster with a QR code, which will lead them to a landing page. Users click buttons between "That's really a problem for me!" or "I never have this problem" so that we have the idea to what extent how this problem is troubling people.
Poster
Landing Page
Results
collect target users
collect button clicks data
problem assessment
Poster｜scan the QR code and see how many people are interested in this idea
Landing Page｜ the QR code will lead you to a mini questionnaire on this landing page
Results
1400%
87.5%
Poster visitor growth after promotions in Group chat
"That's really a problem for me!!!"
According to our landing page research, the number of visitors reached 1400% after we post the poster in the student WeChat group. Results show that around 87.5% of users click "That's really a problem for me!!!" button, indicating that they are having difficulty in rationally using social media apps and managing their usage time.
Current Solutions
Most of the current solutions can't ultimately depart from limiting screen time and locking certain apps. While through interviews it turns out that any form of screen lock doesn't work well.
Current Solution - Interview Highlights
「I usually choose to "ignore" the screen lock and the world becomes better.」
「I feel upset when I am locked against WeChat for the rest of the day. Most of the time I just reopen it anyway.」
「I feel disconnected and insecure if I disable the moments in WeChat.」
「It's a bad experience to find it locked when I need to pay by WeChat.」
Solution - WAIT
The real pain point of wasting time purposelessly using social media apps is that these social media apps have multiple functions, most of which are designed to catch users' attention as much as possible. And it's not users' fault to lose control of their attention when using social media apps.
The breakthrough is that users should be aware of their attention when using the app. Users should be guided to use the app purposefully and have a method to manage their attention.
We want people to wait for a second every time opening the social media app and POSITIVELY think about and choose their purpose in using the app.
Prototype
Prototype User Test Feedback
I usually open social media apps without any purpose, which results in a waste of time.
I need to reduce the purposeless usage of social media app.
I think WAIT is helpful to reduce the purposeless usage of social media app.
I'll install this individual plugin.
More to go
Result
The user test shows around 80% of the users think that WAIT would help with a more rational usage of social media apps. Around 70% of them would like to install this individual plugin.
Next Step
Our next step would be:
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Talk with users who think WAIT is not doing a decent job and ask for their suggestions for further improvements.
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Set out to build the plugin and test. We need the real data of how WAIT works in reducing the unnecessary clicks on WeChat and saving the unnoticed time.
Takeaway
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Should be brave to think out of the current solutions. Before coming up WAIT, we brainstormed some other ideas, like locking the app in different ways, or making it a foster game so that users can form a focusing habit (which turns out to be just another version of Forest). A innovative solution means really understanding the problem, which may quite differ from the current solutions.
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User test and iteration never ends. As we tested previous ideas, users gave important feedback that we can doing similar to current solutions. They won't buy our story, which pushed us to find a more creative and effective way. As we keep on making the prototype and building the plugin, what users think should always be our priority to consider for a better design.