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Reducing Risk in Digital Self-Control Tools: Design Patterns and Prototype

Published:08 May 2021Publication History

ABSTRACT

Many users take advantage of digital self-control tools to self-regulate their device usage through interventions such as timers and lockout mechanisms. One of the major challenges faced by these tools is the user reacting against their self-imposed constraints and abandoning the tool. Although lower-risk interventions would reduce the likelihood of abandonment, previous research on digital self-control tools has left this area of study relatively unexplored. In response, this paper contributes two foundational principles relating risk and effectiveness; four widely applicable novel design patterns for reducing risk of abandonment of digital self-control tools (continuously variable interventions, anti-aging design, obligatory bundling of interventions, and intermediary control systems); and a prototype digital self-control tool that implements these four low-risk design patterns.

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          cover image ACM Conferences
          CHI EA '21: Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
          May 2021
          2965 pages
          ISBN:9781450380959
          DOI:10.1145/3411763

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