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Luke Haliburton, HASH(0x55f59e204550), Albrecht Schmidt
Think Inside the Box: Investigating the Consequences of Everyday Physical Opt-Out Strategies for Mindful Smartphone Use
In Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Media. MUM '22. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3568444.3568452. (bib)

Absent-minded smartphone use has become a catalyst for digital stress. It is often triggered by the mere presence of the device itself, inciting physical opt-out solutions with potentially severe drawbacks. Consequently, there is a need to explore the design dimensions and entailing limitations of physical opt-out methods, especially for everyday use. Informed through expert interviews and online questionnaires, we designed a proof of concept prototype that creates a physical barrier between users and their smartphones while maintaining ease of access. We evaluated our prototype concept in a two-week in-the-wild study, surfacing known benefits of physical opt-out strategies, such as encouraging reflection and supporting deliberate breaks. Although we reduced absent-minded use for users with a high predisposition, drawbacks such as Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) remain. Our work highlights that finding the appropriate amount of physical separation is essential when designing opt-out strategies for digital wellbeing.