We have all heard the term “workaholic” before. It refers to someone who just cannot put down their work, regardless of the fact that this persistent work can get in the way of more important aspects of life. The danger lies in that some people even prioritize their work over eating, using the bathroom, and bathing themselves.
In our project, we hoped to address this lack of work life balance while encouraging stressful activities and fostering interpersonal relationships with people in similar situations. By employing social proof, self affirmation, and a more central route of processing (in the Elaboriation Likelihood Model), we were able to see that every participant took 2-3 more breaks with our application than without.
.png)
Want to take a deeper dive into the research?
Over the course of a semester, I spearheaded a research study to create an application to promote a prosocial behavior. From the beginning of the project, we knew that we wanted to address power screen users’ inability to take breaks, but only through preliminary user research did we come to the problem statement:
How might we...
change the attitudes that users have towards work and breaks, specifically hoping to promote healthy relationships with work by encouraging consistent break-taking?
The process...
Through heavy user and background research, we were able to determine the main aspects we needed to tackle and the best strategies. We started by reaching out to our target audience, power screen users in the student population. We wanted to know what worked and what did not from their perspective, not because users are the most reliable source, but because it would key us into what users would try. From there we could user user testing, expert interviews, and literature research to steer us towards the best psychological fit for fostering our users’ goals.
The research...
Putting it together...
Major Insights:
The Solution...
We came up with an application called “balance.”, that would allow users to see the reward value of breaks. They would be able to link up their calendars to allow users to plan their own breaks or let the app learn the opportune break taking times.
The app would continually send break reminders in which each reminder would house a challenge from a friend. At the beginning of the onboarding process the user had to put in some of their core values and interests. The app then takes these identity aspects and can suggest challenges that subtly highlight a particular value or interest, which is affirming for the user receiving the dare. For example, for someone very into art, the app might suggest a dare in which the user has to draw something.
By making the dare low pressure and rather silly, it does not explicitly affirm the user, which could be jarring and cause reactance. It also demonstrates social proof because in order to send the dare, the friend must have also been on a break. Furthermore, the user must engage in a central route of processing to understand that a break is a good idea, first through a more peripheral route by priming the user with the idea that breaks are a good idea, and then by asking if the user wants to take a break to see a mysterious and exciting new dare. The norm of break taking willy accrue dynamically and create a dare gallery, which shows the user’s fun times with friends and the progress of them taking breaks.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
Implications...
In our last of 3 iterations of testing, we were able to test on 10 people, all of whom improved the number of breaks taken in a a two day period by 2-3 breaks. We deemed this significant, especially since some of these people, without any interference would take no break at all over the original controlled period of testing.
We are proud of this project because it means that people can be helped in terms of break taking and even caring about their health over their work. We maintain that there is a ever growing problem in people’s lack of prioritization for their well being when compared to their maintenance of their physical and emotional health, but with promising statistics and backing in psychological research, we are confident in our application.
For a specialized report on the specific work done to complete the project, please read:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18Kj7QYsvJIlkYaTQHoOFtCDL-kNqXB3Aqb9pNa67NnA/edit?usp=sharing
It can also be summarized by the following blog post:
https://anushreeabhyankar.medium.com/balance-helping-college-students-integrate-healthy-breaks-into-their-busy-schedules-a99e92efbab3
The design structure for a possible front end interface: