Ingrained associations don't die easily. I remember when I first quit facebook. I still had the habit of quickly pressing "F, enter" for months after I quit. After a couple years though, I hardly ever go through that old routine.
Just now I enabled grayscale via the Android developer menu. I noticed an immediate reduction in intensity. It didn't feel like "bullshit" to me! If you want this to help you, you're probably gonna have to give it a little bit more of an open mind. The attitude of "this is bullshit" could very easily sabotage any positive benefits of this exercise. Big things grow from small seeds, but only if you water them, give them light and make sure they don't get crowded out by more aggressive plants.
> I remember when I first quit facebook. I still had the habit of quickly pressing "F, enter" for months after I quit.
Same.when I run a distraction blocker, I often don't realize I'm firing another ’ctrl+t,f,enter' sequence until I hit the blocker.
It's made me realize how devilishly efficient companies are at exploiting our dopamine cycles. Case in poin: I tried to disable in app purchases in Google Play, but short of removing all payment options (which breaks my project fi billing), there's no way.
For as frustrating as I find it, though, it's devastating to think of the impact on ppl living in poverty,for whom every source of daily relaxation is probably some well funded dopamine dealer trying to extract their $11 / hr pay one micro transaction at a time.
It's nowhere near a solution, but it helps a little. Those red notification badges really play tricks with your mind.
Grey-scale + no social media apps + carefully controlling the types of notifications you receive makes a smartphone almost not an unhealthy thing to carry in your pocket.
> I think it is bullshit, because black and white slot machine still is a slot machine.
> Turned on grayscale in macOS(System Prefs - Accessibility - Display) before googling this articles, can confirm that still receiving dopamine hits.
It's not a solution to the whole problem, just part of the problem; specifically this part:
> “Color’s not a signal for detecting objects, it’s actually something much more fundamental: it’s for telling us what’s likely to be important,” Mr. Conway said. “If you have lots of color and contrast then you’re under a constant state of attentional recruitment. Your attentional system is constantly going, ‘Look look look over here.’ ”
These companies are manipulating every physiological knob they can. This is one, addictive dopamine hits are another.
I started doing this yesterday. I kind of like it and I think I'm getting distracted less with grayscale. I'll unlock my phone and won't forget why I unlocked.
You don't need an app for android to do this system-wide (tho I could see why whitelisting would be nice). Just go to developer options-> Simulate color space-> Monochromacy
After reading this article [1], I created a small "disconnect box" that sits by my front door (it's a repurposed iphone box). When I'm home, and especially when the kids are awake, the phone stays in there. I can hear if someone calls, but otherwise notifications are off. Working quite well so far!
In (iOS && iPhone<9), you can toggle this filter with the triple click trick. In Settings > General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut, select Color Filters, then triple click the home button.
I have a fully updated Nexus - if you search Settings for "gray" you get no results. No "direct access" options under Accessibility. Seems like they may have removed it since 7. They do have some color-blind color correction options, but grayscale wasn't something I could find.
ETA: Ah on the "Go gray" page they describe the steps, including enabling Developer Mode first.
No, definitely not. Apple recently restricted apps' usage of URL schemes to check whether other apps are even installed on the phone.
It's possible they could be doing something really esoteric with an enterprise app (doesn't need to go through app review) or an MDM profile (can touch some deeper system stuff sometimes), but given that they're currently in the teaser email capture phase, I doubt this will ever crystallize into a real iOS implementation.
I think they're just trying to get some message out, which is fair enough. FWIW, you can always manually set your iPhone to greyscale in system accessibility settings, which they do point out themselves.
The main point of this is definitely to start a "movement"
It's not about me or the app, it's just something that had a profound impact on my life and i'm trying to share that with everyone that might be struggling with this - that's why we include instructions to turn your phone gray natively. The app adds features that have kept some people from going gray even though they really want to (need phone for work and it's too much of a hassle to go menu hopping / navigation apps arent the best in grayscale etc).
I did the native version of this after someone mentioned it in one of the general articles on phone addiction that have been making their rounds on HN since the start of the year. So far I don't feel like it has had much of an effect. I've only noticed two direct behavioral changes for me so far:
1) It is forcing me to wait to watch YouTube videos until I get to a computer because I want to see them in color. That seems like it should be a big gain, but I still find myself scrolling through my YouTube recommendations anyway. Habits die hard I guess.
2) It is also delaying my reading of the couple of web comics I follow since, again, I want to see them in full color.
So I guess my phone usage overall has dropped considerably since YouTube takes up most of my time. I'm already off Reddit starting a couple of months ago and I've been off of Facebook (except Messenger) and Twitter for over a year. So maybe I'm not really the target of all of this, but I definitely spend more time than I would like on YouTube.
I also made a change to my settings so that my phone screen no longer wakes up when a notification arrives. So it is less distracting when sitting on a table.
In addition I saw a couple of other pieces of advice on here to curb phone use: One of them mentioned putting only fast utility apps on your home screen and removing notifications that don't come directly from people (basically every notification except for personal e-mail, human texts, and Slack messages I guess?). I haven't tried either of those things yet but I'm definitely considering it. They both require a bit more thought and planning than simple settings changes.
In regards to the site linked, I have only one additional piece of input: Please stop with the scroll jacking. This is a well known web design anti-pattern. I don't understand why this fad has persisted as long as it has. It literally feels like the site is broken when interacting with it using a click wheel.
Website creator here, thanks for the comment! I do recognize the hate for scroll jacking, however it was the only way for me to set up the website with that effect, do you know of another way? I'd love to make a change (i'll be honest, i didnt know scrolljacking was something that was so despised)
Please note that this response is only in the context of your home page desktop design on Firefox. I'd need to spend some additional time doing analysis on mobile and other browsers.
In your case, my main problem with the design is two pieces, my scrollbar is missing until after the slide show and the animated pieces of the slide show don't move using the same "physics" principals as a bare html page in the same browser. The lack of a scroll bar (I have an optional setting on so it is always visible if present) means that I don't expect there to be additional content on the page. Then when I do try scrolling, ot feels like nothing is happening at all and then I hit some invisible threshold and the page scrolls _for_ me. This feels a little bit like lag, which in any other case would mean that my computer is breaking. That's a bad feeling.
In most cases I would suggest a medium scale redesign - save the font choices, the colors, and some of the layouts but go back to the drawing board on the user interactions. However I know that designs like this continue to be popular and so I'm going to have to keep working on them. I've found that there are some decent compromises out there. So here's what I would suggest:
1) For the transition between the final slide (pip 3) and the actual page content drop the fixed animation entirely. That content should simply be at the bottom of the page the entire time.
2) For the transitions between the 3 images of Venice (or wherever?), I think you're going to need to do a bit of playing around. Ideally the largest object on the screen should move in direct relation (and with a 1 to 1 ratio) to the scrollbar without any delay. The absolutist in me wants to say that you should just place the 3 images in a stack and be done with it, but I realize that's not eye catching enough for the audience you're targeting. In your case one option would be to consider the "largest object" to be the horizontal scan line where one image stops and the other image starts. But the problem there is that you're still going to have to do significant scroll jacking to get that transition point to move...
However, I think you can get an effect like this using transparency or opacity settings and some complex positioning. You might need JavaScript for slide transitions after the first, but I would have to actually build the thing to figure it out. I'll think about it overnight and let you know if I come up with anything! (No promises though!)
Another option might be to use background-clip: content-box; for the transitions and then some JS magic in-between slide transitions to change which image is in the foreground and which is in the background.
The text at the bottom would continue to switch in a slide show style I think. You would have to try it and see.
If you want to preserve the delay between slides, you'll need to add a somewhat large visual element to the design that continues to move as the user scrolls even while the image stays in place, but in this case, I'm not sure if that will be necessary.
None of those solutions will completely remove scroll event listeners, but they will bring the experience back significantly toward being in line with normal system interactions.
This feeling of lack of control vs perfect control is something I look for in the video games I play. I've come to believe that it is the single most important part of game design for me. Games like QWOP and Getting Over It play with this idea intentionally, while historical successes like Mario 64 and Soul Calibur have made waves in the gaming world specifically because their controls are so refined and fluid.
Sorry I wrote so much! I appreciate the work you're doing with this site and I wish you much success!
I've taken this comment back to my team and we're discussing our next moves now - I think the easiest and most immediate thing we can do is removing the scroll effect on the third screen to the homepage - hopefully that reduces some frustration for you (and i'm sure many others have felt).
Thank you for the kind words! Definitely trying to make an impact in the space :)
Looks interesting, but it seems to be a landing page to gauge interest with no app available yet.
Edit: To be clear, I set my phone to grayscale a little while ago, so I'm aware that's built in to iOS. I think the additional features that this app idea is proposing on top of that feature are great, but it seems like the app does not yet exist (and perhaps not possible with iOS's limitations).
i give instructions for going gray on phones on the website, the app we're developing is desgined to make grayscale easier (whitelisting certain apps that is useful in colour, like google maps, etc).
i give instructions for going gray on phones on the website, the app we're developing is desgined to make grayscale easier (whitelisting certain apps that is useful in colour, like google maps, etc).
Thanks for the explanatory article; just reading the linked site left me scratching my head wondering what the heck putting my phone in grayscale mode would have to do with "phone addiction".
I'm still not convinced it makes much sense, but at least it's not totally random....
I don't know about the app, but following the instructions on that website I have just set my phone to monochrome mode.
I'm not sure it will assist me to use my phone less, because initially I really like it!
The main use for my phone is to read stuff; news, email and instant messaging. I don't use social networking on my phone (apart from Hacker News if that qualifies). I do use a 2FA app, but colour hardly matters there. I do also take pictures with the phone and perhaps that's the one potential drawback I can think of.
I find the monochrome look easier on the eyes and initially very pleasant to use.
the app may work for you still, if you find grayscale is taking away your ability to take the photos you want - the whitelisting feature would turn it off when you're in your camera (without menu hopping)
Ah, fair point. The main difference is that the games I was playing were not explicitly designed for grey scale. If I had been playing on a GameBoy emulator, I wouldn't have even noticed!
Judging how it is impossible to watch a b&w movie with friends today, pretty much. If all my mp3's were shellac records, i would listen less, but value my time listening more.
I have this thing called self-control and discipline. It doesn't cost anything except respect for one's self. Throwing technology and apps at character flaws isn't a long-term solution for anything and only feeds consumerism and materialism.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machin...
[2]: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-mak...
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphon...
[4]: https://venturebeat.com/2016/04/02/app-makers-its-time-to-st...
[5]: https://medium.com/@anamitra/dopamine-hits-and-product-desig...
Turned on grayscale in macOS(System Prefs - Accessibility - Display) before googling this articles, can confirm that still receiving dopamine hits.