Let people grow naturally, not virtually - Countering the menace of Mobile Phone Addiction

Challenge: Excessive Addiction to Mobile Phones has resulted in low social interaction and collapse of face-to-face encounters of our Children in Real World

Metaphor – Let people grow naturally, not virtually

Solution:

The motion study of using a phone can be broken down into 2 simple parts

•        Picking up the phone
•        Using the phone

Picking up the phone can be due to multiple reasons, the most common thing is an extrinsic trigger, a notification such as an incoming phone call, a WhatsApp / FB notification. We also, take up the phone due to intrinsic trigger such as to google something, to use apps like Uber, Swiggy, IRCTC, etc…

Using the phone can have endless possibilities, it could be for the reason why we picked up the phone initially. But in many cases, we end up spending more time on the phone and doing completely different things that we picked up the phone for. This can be linked to Dopamine; it always leads us to desire more. This explains how a quick check of the message turns into endless scrolling of FB news feed.

My direct observation of others and my own personal experience have given me the insight that picking up the phone is the tipping point. If we can control the picking up phone, dominating the and limit it to use only major usage. This could help control unnecessary time spent on mobile phones.

Any addiction can be overcome only if 2 things fall into place

• The person understands that he is under addiction, realizes the harmful effects and understands the need to get out of addiction.
• There is a control mechanism which restricts overuse and acts as an indicator of the usage by displaying data and make the user aware of his usage.

The 2^nd point can act as a complement for point 1.

Therefore, I propose a simple solution – Mobile Black Box, a simple cardboard box that helps you control your mobile phone addiction and dedicate your time for value-adding tasks.

Mobile Black Box acts as a keeping area of your mobile phone. You can keep the phone inside the box and when any need is there you can take out the phone. The box can be closed only when a phone is inside.

Looks like cardboard model prototype as below

The features of Mobile Black Box is

1.   It has a dial ( black rectangular dial in the middle) measuring 'Mobile Twitch Indicator' which shows how many times the box has been opened, which essentially means how many times you have reached for your phone.
2.  Same dial measures 'Mobile Out of Box' time, the time the box was kept open indicating the usage time of the mobile by the person.
3.   There is also an additional provision to auto-lock and unlock the box at a designated time

Indicator 1 &2 will help understand the level of usage of mobile phones by the person. Autolock feature will help people to have Mobile Silence period where they will not use mobiles at all.

Some drawbacks and reasonable justification are

· It will not measure what the mobile was used for – True, but the box to an extent ensure that mobile phone was used exclusively for the purpose for which it was taken outside. Since ‘Mobile Out of Box’ time is also measured, people will be willing to keep it inside ASAP.

· It will not measure the time spent outside home – True, but once he subtracts the time he was outside home he will know how much time he has spent inside home and calculate the within home usage wisely, also like a decade ago people should not be overly dependant on mobile phones while going out always, maybe while going to a grocer or going to a park you can go mobile phone free and can spend some quality time.

Storyboard – 1: Life of children before and after Mobile Black Box 

Storyboard – 2: Life of a young couple before and after Mobile Black Box 

Low-Cost Experiment

As said in the book, ‘8 steps to Innovation’, an experiment is a planned activity to validate one or more assumptions of an idea. Here the assumptions we are making in this idea is

1.   People want to get out of mobile phone addictions and want to spend time in value-adding activities
2.    I can develop a simple apparatus with the help of technology which helps them to achieve this need
3.  This apparatus is easily implementable and can be used across many houses easily
4.   The apparatus takes very less cost and can be priced at a reasonable margin. 

 Testing all 4 hypotheses with single low-cost experimentation is not possible, but the following experiment will be able to touch upon the first 2 assumptions.

Since the experiment deals with a habit, and it takes a period of time to evaluate the change. Hence, I propose a 5-day low-cost experiment instead of a 1-day experiment

What Will I do – The Mobile Phone Black Box will be given to 5 households with children having higher mobile consumption. They will be asked to keep track of Mobile Twitch Indicator and Mobile Out of Box counts day by day for 5 days continuously.

What hypothesis it will test –

1.       People want to get rid of mobile phone addiction

2.       People will be improved if there is a metric that is keeping track of their activity and feels happy by seeing their daily improvement.

What is the cost of the experiment – Cost of 5 boxes and one manpower for monitoring and follow-up

How will I measure success?

•        Keeping daily track of “Mobile Twitch Indicator’ and ‘Mobile Out of Box’ indicator. Reduction in counts shows people reducing their mobile phone activity
•        Feedback from parents of the children regarding how the box is used are children keeping the phone inside while the phone is not being used
•        Feedback from children regarding their willingness to use the box and any improvements they have felt
•         Checking if the apparatus faced any technical glitches to ensure the Tech is working properly. 

Going Forward

Depending on the success of the experiment we will decide whether to improve this idea by incorporating additional features like usage checks (for what the mobile phones are being used) or to pivot from this idea and think of an alternate solution. As Thomke points out, "Real outcome of an experiment is learning".