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Towards Multi-device Digital Self-control Tools

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Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021 (INTERACT 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12935))

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Abstract

Users can nowadays take advantage of Digital-Self Control Tools (DSCT) to self-regulate their usage of applications and websites by means of interventions like timers and lockout mechanisms. However, DSCTs mainly focus on the interaction between users and a single device at a time, while people typically use more than one device, and in a concurrent way. This motivates the need of exploring tools that can adapt to multi-device settings. We present FeelHabits, a DSCT that allows users to set up, through a novel approach, multi-device intentions, i.e., contextual time and launch limits for the simultaneous and/or alternating use of the PC and the smartphone. Stemming from the defined intentions, FeelHabits employs different levels of severity to warn the user about a reached limit on the currently used device. A preliminary study on 7 participants suggests that FeelHabits might be effective for reducing some multi-device behaviors, and opens the way for further research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://nodejs.org/en/, last visited on October 29, 2020.

  2. 2.

    https://firebase.google.com/, last visited on October 29, 2020.

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Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank all the anonymous participants of our study, and the MSc student Elia Bravo for developing the FeelHabits prototype.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129, Torino, Italy

    Alberto Monge Roffarello & Luigi De Russis

Authors
  1. Alberto Monge Roffarello
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  2. Luigi De Russis
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alberto Monge Roffarello .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Ardito

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Rosa Lanzilotti

  3. Computer Science Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Alessio Malizia

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK

    Helen Petrie

  5. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Antonio Piccinno

  6. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Giuseppe Desolda

  7. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

    Kori Inkpen

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Monge Roffarello, A., De Russis, L. (2021). Towards Multi-device Digital Self-control Tools. In: Ardito, C., et al. Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021. INTERACT 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12935. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85610-6_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85610-6_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-85609-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-85610-6

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