A Longitudinal In-the-Wild Investigation of Design Frictions to Prevent Smartphone Overuse

Smartphone overuse is hyper-prevalent in society, and developing tools to prevent this overuse has become a focus of HCI. However, there is a lack of work investigating smartphone overuse interventions over the long term. We collected usage data from N = 1, 039 users of one sec over an average of 13.4 weeks and qualitative insights from 249 of the users through an online survey. We found that users overwhelmingly choose to target Social Media apps. We found that the short design frictions introduced by one sec effectively reduce how often users attempt to open target apps and lead to more intentional app-openings over time. Additionally, we found that users take periodic breaks from one sec interventions, and quickly rebound from a pattern of overuse when returning from breaks. Overall, we contribute findings from a longitudinal investigation of design frictions in the wild and identify usage patterns from real users in practice.