Time Out: Influence of user experience design on behavior to reduce smartphone use

We are more connected than we used to be but people are becoming disengaged from the real world. Are smartphones a blessing or a bane? That depends on how we use it. Being hooked to a smartphone while interacting with family or friends is a definite no-no. To address the issue of being neglected in social situations, timeOut allows neglected users to send anonymous timeouts to obsessive smartphone users who are preoccupied with their smartphones and are in close proximity to neglected users. The timeOut app allows neglected users to express their feelings without upsetting or embarrassing anyone. The application leveraged lean UX methodologies to quantify smartphone usage to make people aware of their distractive behavior. The goal of the project is to influence behavior through nudges, prompts and challenges that help the users in making positive behavioral changes.This project takes the form of a proof-of-concept prototype. The final outcome is based on research, user experience and human-computer interaction, design principles and technology to demonstrate the underlying concepts. timeOut has four main objectives: • To positively influence social behavior and impact smartphone usage with the help of user-friendly interface • To promote conversation • To make obsessive smartphone users aware of their distractive social behavior • To limit the interactions to bare minimum and design an externally consistent design for the iOS platfor

Implementation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in e–Mental Health Apps: Literature Review

Background: To address the matter of limited resources for treating individuals with mental disorders, e–mental health has gained interest in recent years. More specifically, mobile health (mHealth) apps have been suggested as electronic mental health interventions accompanied by cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Objective: This study aims to identify the therapeutic aspects of CBT that have been implemented in existing mHealth apps and the technologies used. From these, we aim to derive research gaps that should be addressed in the future. Methods: Three databases were screened for studies on mHealth apps in the context of mental disorders that implement techniques of CBT: PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Digital Library. The studies were independently selected by 2 reviewers, who then extracted data from the included studies. Data on CBT techniques and their technical implementation in mHealth apps were synthesized narratively. Results: Of the 530 retrieved citations, 34 (6.4%) studies were included in this review. mHealth apps for CBT exploit two groups of technologies: technologies that implement CBT techniques for cognitive restructuring, behavioral activation, and problem solving (exposure is not yet realized in mHealth apps) and technologies that aim to increase user experience, adherence, and engagement. The synergy of these technologies enables patients to self-manage and self-monitor their mental state and access relevant information on their mental illness, which helps them cope with mental health problems and allows self-treatment. Conclusions: There are CBT techniques that can be implemented in mHealth apps. Additional research is needed on the efficacy of the mHealth interventions and their side effects, including inequalities because of the digital divide, addictive internet behavior, lack of trust in mHealth, anonymity issues, risks and biases for user groups and social contexts, and ethical implications. Further research is also required to integrate and test psychological theories to improve the impact of mHealth and adherence to the e–mental health interventions

Entrepreneurial Project Umi - Social Impact Application

Treballs Finals del Màster en Creació i Gestió d'Empreses Innovadores i de Base Tecnològica, Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2020-2022, Tutor: Rafael Fernández SantorThe social impact mobile application envisioned represents an opportunity to address some of the century’s most pressing challenges in regard to both relationships and personal safety. The astonishing rates of abuse, rape, and violence among intimate partners worldwide ought to serve as a resolute call to spring goals into actions. With a vision to build safer communities, the company’s intrinsic aspirations for human interactions and relationships stand around three core pillars: Education, protection, and support. The digital solution would empower all individuals to make informed decisions about whether or not they may wish to spend a night or their lifetime with a particular person, while providing them with the foundation to establish reliable safety networks. The array of functions designed would serve large groups of varied individuals spanning all origins, professions, and orientations. By positioning itself as a leader on all safety matters in relationships and sexual encounters, Umi would target sex workers, non sex workers, adults and minors. The name of the application draws on the sense of connectedness that may be shared by two individuals interacting through a personal relationship of any form. Written together, Umi refers to “You & Me”. A way of expressing the closeness inferred by the pronoun “Us”. With a set objective to reach 10,000 subscribers paying an annual fee of 55 Euros for a premium access, within the first twelve months of the EU launch, the project could reach commercial viability in a short timeframe. Operating costs would be kept to a minimum for the first six months by bootstrapping the development between three founding partners, thereby affording greater breathing space in terms of cash flows. The team would grow with revenues only so as to maintain a positive net position at all times. In parallel, meticulously crafted marketing campaigns would be designed to attract loyal users, who likewise embrace values of respect and safety. They too, appreciate technology and care about impact

Investigating New Forms of Single-handed Physical Phone Interaction with Finger Dexterity

With phones becoming more powerful and such an essential part of our lives, manufacturers are creating new device forms and interactions to better support even more diverse functions. A common goal is to enable a larger input space and expand the input vocabulary using new physical phone interactions other than touchscreen input. This thesis explores how utilizing our hand and finger dexterity can expand physical phone interactions. To understand how we can physically manipulate a phone using the fine motor skills of finger, we identify and evaluate single-handed "dexterous gestures". Four manipulations are defined: shift, spin (yaw axis), rotate (roll axis) and flip (pitch axis), with a formative survey showing all except flip have been performed for various reasons. A controlled experiment examines the speed, behaviour, and preference of manipulations in the form of dexterous gestures, by considering two directions and two movement magnitudes. Using a heuristic recognizer for spin, rotate, and flip, a one-week usability experiment finds increased practice and familiarity improve the speed and comfort of dexterous gestures. With the confirmation that users can loosen their grip and perform gestures with finger dexterity, we investigate the performance of one-handed touch input on the side of a mobile phone. An experiment examines grip change and subjective preference when reaching for side targets using different fingers. Two following experiments examine taps and flicks using the thumb and index finger in a new two-dimensional input space. We simulate a side-touch sensor with a combination of capacitive sensing and motion tracking to distinguish touches on the lower, middle, or upper edges. We further focus on physical phone interaction with a new phone form factor by exploring and evaluating single-handed folding interactions suitable for "modern flip phones": smartphones with a bendable full screen touch display. Three categories of interactions are identified: only-fold, touch-enhanced fold, and fold-enhanced touch; in which gestures are created using fold direction, fold magnitude, and touch position. A prototype evaluation device is built to resemble current flip phones, but with a modified spring system to enable folding in both directions. A study investigates performance and preference for 30 fold gestures, revealing which are most promising. Overall, our exploration shows that users can loosen their grip to physically interact with phones in new ways, and these interactions could be practically integrated into daily phone applications

Security by behavioural design: a rapid review

Security and Global AffairsCybersecurity en cybergovernanc

Framework for the Integration of Mobile Device Features in PLM

Currently, companies have covered their business processes with stationary workstations while mobile business applications have limited relevance. Companies can cover their overall business processes more time-efficiently and cost-effectively when they integrate mobile users in workflows using mobile device features. The objective is a framework that can be used to model and control business applications for PLM processes using mobile device features to allow a totally new user experience

Development of a smartphone app-based intervention to promote physical activity among people living with and beyond cancer

With increasing numbers of people being diagnosed with cancer, and living for many years after diagnosis, it is important that cancer survivors are supported to live well, for as long as possible. Physical activity improves quality of life and many treatment side effects after cancer. Physical activity is important in reducing the risk of other common comorbid conditions and may prolong survival in cancer survivors. However, many cancer survivors do not meet recommended levels of physical activity and evidence-based interventions that are accessible and that could be implemented at scale are needed. The rising use of the internet, smartphones and mobile technology mean that digital interventions could reach large proportions of the population in a way that could be more cost-effective and scalable. This thesis used mixed-methods to conduct a series of studies with the aim of developing a smartphone-app based intervention to promote physical activity in breast, prostate and colorectal cancer survivors. Study 1 showed that digital interventions have the potential to increase cancer survivors’ moderate-vigorous physical activity by 41 minutes per week, however high-quality studies are lacking. Study 2 found that 38% and 24% of breast, prostate and colorectal cancer survivors respectively are interested in internet-based and app-based health behaviour interventions. Interest is related to several sociodemographic and participant characteristics. Study 3 found that physical activity apps must acknowledge the varying needs and physical activity preferences of cancer survivors. Apps that promote walking and are recommended to them by members of their clinical team (particularly Clinical Nurse Specialists) are favoured. Study 4 provided insight into Clinical Nurse Specialists’ perceptions of their role in physical activity promotion and showed that they are generally positive about the use of apps to complement existing physical activity promotion in cancer care. Together, these studies led to the development of an app-based physical activity intervention for cancer survivors

A Multi-Criteria-Based Evaluation of Android Applications

Android users can face the risk of downloading and installing bad applications on their devices. In fact, many applications may either hide malware, or their expected behavior do not fully follow the user\u27s expectation. This happens because, at install-time, even if the user is warned with the potential security threat of the application, she often skips this alert message. On Android this is due to the complexity of the permission system, which may be tricky to fully understand. We propose a multi-criteria evaluation of Android applications, to help the user to easily understand the trustworthiness degree of an application, both from a security and a functional side. We validate our approach by testing it on more than 180 real applications found either on official and unofficial markets

Preserving Users’ Location Privacy in Mobile Platforms

Mobile and interconnected devices both have witnessed rapid advancements in computing and networking capabilities due to the emergence of Internet-of-Things, Connected Societies, Smart Cities and other similar paradigms. Compared to traditional personal computers, these devices represent moving gateways that offer possibilities to influence new businesses and, at the same time, have the potential to exchange users’ sensitive data. As a result, this raises substantial threats to the security and privacy of users that must be considered. With the focus on location data, this thesis proposes an efficient and socially-acceptable solution to preserve users’ location privacy, maintaining the quality of service, and respecting the usability by not relying on changes to the mobile app ecosystem. This thesis first analyses the current mobile app ecosystem as to apply a privacy-bydesign approach to location privacy from the data computation to its visualisation. From our analysis, a 3-Layer Classification model is proposed that depicts the state-ofthe- art in three layers providing a new perspective towards privacy-preserving locationbased applications. Secondly, we propose a theoretically sound privacy-enhancing model, called LP-Cache, that forces the mobile app ecosystem to make location data usage patterns explicit and maintains the balance between location privacy and service utility. LP-Cache defines two location privacy preserving algorithms: on-device location calculation and personalised permissions. The former incorporates caching technique to determine the location of client devices by means of wireless access points and achieve data minimisation in the current process. With the later, users can manage each app and private place distinctly to mitigate fundamental location privacy threats, such as tracking, profiling, and identification. Finally, PL-Protector, implements LP-Cache as a middleware on Android platform. We evaluate PL-Protector in terms of performance, privacy, and security. Experimental results demonstrate acceptable delay and storage overheads, which are within practical limits. Hence, we claim that our approach is a practical, secure and efficient solution to preserve location privacy in the current mobile app ecosystem