1. ERSU: Excessive Recreational Screen Use
2. Intrinsic needs: Emotional needs, Core needs and Personal significance needs essential for human flourishing.
3. Humansic Living: Human + Intrinsic + Living. This concept combines the actions of, a. The harmony of human intrinsic needs and values: Happiness, pleasure, health, life and self-actualisation, with b. The idea of being more human in an increasingly digitised world - taking control, re-connecting in deeper ways with himself, family and friends, and the world around them with meaningfulness from the purpose of their activities.
When an individual's daily actions addresses and harmonises his intrinsic needs with mindfulness and meaningful human purposes, it is considered Humansic Living. An example of Humansic Living is meaningful screen-use.
Humansic Living can be measured by,
1. A willingness to change and take action
2. Positive results from individual's actions - I have only defined 3 main indicators to measure positive results at this juncture. Humansic Living is a new concept and more indicators/measurements may be developed from further testings. The 3 are:
- a. A willingness to maintain positive habits. This can be measured qualitatively.
- b. A positive change seen in improvements. Improvement can be measured quantitatively (sleep / nutrition / physical wellness) and qualitatively (deeper conversations / social connection / mental wellness)
- c. Efforts and carrying out actions to sustain healthy change. This can be measured qualitatively.
4. Humansic Design: Interventions / Experiences / Interactions that afford the Intrinsic needs to be addressed or harmonised in an individual's life or helps to facilitate his Humansic Living.
My aim for this project is to create a series of Humansic interventions as part of a conditioning process for meaningful screen use. The series of interventions are designed with the intent of addressing and harmonising human intrinsic needs to facilitate an individual's journey of minimising ERSU and adopting meaningful screen-use habits.
All testings have been trying to evaluate,
- If the intervention / experience / interaction (card game, sleep experience, conditioning) is considered 'Humansic' aka, effective in facilitating and supporting an individual who is trying to adopt Humansic Living.
- Social Bonding and Sleep are two domains I targetted to position interventions, main objective was to see if the interventions are Humansic; Facilitate & enable participants to meaningfully minimise ERSU and adopt mindful screen habits.
1. Allow individual to indulge in a pleasurable and non-intrusive experience (physio-pleasure) Emotional needs
2. Individual feels that the usability is easy and straightforward (psycho-pleasure) Emotional needs
3. After using the design / experience, individual chooses to use screens mindfully while taking care of his core / essential needs (sleep, health, well-being, social well-being) Core needs
4. The act of mindfulness is understood as a meaningful action Meaningfulness
5. With the harmony of the above, an individual's mindful and meaningful actions can then enhance his capabilities for self-actualisation needs, supporting his journey of flourishing. Personal Significance needs
A design is considered Humansic when,
1. Individual demonstrates willingness to change and take action after the design interaction / experience
2. There are positive results from individual's actions influenced by the design - Positive results are:
- a. A willingness to maintain positive habits. This can be measured qualitatively.
- b. A positive change seen in improvements. Improvement can be measured quantitatively (sleep / nutrition / physical wellness) and qualitatively (deeper conversations / social connection / mental wellness)
- c. Efforts and carrying out actions to sustain healthy change. This can be measured qualitatively.
1. Card game to evoke mindfulness - 52 participants
2. Multi-sensory sleep experience to support positive change - Focus group of 9 participants, identified from card game participants
3. Open-source tutorials to support positive change - Shared with all 52 participants
Objectives of a follow-up with the 9 participants from focus group
1. To see if they have made any conscious effort in mindful / meaningful recreational screen use
2. If their behavior has change for a more positive outlook
Key findings from focus group - 9 participants, including the 3 sleep experiment participants
- All 9 participants shared that they have made conscious effort to minimise their ERSU and be more mindful of their recreational screen-use.
- A participant realised after becoming more mindful about her habits, she reaches out for her phone quite often. She did a full digital detox for a whole Sunday as she felt that she wanted to focus on getting back to sleep and doing her errands without getting distracted. She thought she will be tempted to use her phone but in the end she found out she could could do it (to not use her phone) and she felt good and agree it is liberating.
- All 9 participants made conscious effort to put aside their mobile devices during social interaction so they could engage in deeper conversations
- 8 participants are making effort to minimise recreational screen-use in bed - such as,
- Gathering reading materials to incorporate reading in sleep routine
- Making sure to only watch dramas on TV and not before sleep
- 5 participants took initiative to DIY their own sleeping eye-mask in hope to improve their sleep and ease their urge for using their phones when in bed - Most participants felt better emotionally after minimising their screen-use,
- I feel more focused at work because I reached out for my phone lesser so it actually helped me perform better in that sense
- Before sleeping, I will limit the time browsing social media.
- In the past, I always fall into the rabbit hole of using social media, I am using my phone less and it helps me to sleep more and have a better quality of sleep
- I feel more energetic and awake, it makes me feel that I can perform much better
- Having quality sleeping time help me in my day to day life and work life balance, to get back on track.
- I am using less of the phone before bedtime and I can feel the difference. When I wake up, I feel more energetic and not as tired as before. I find that I can focus more when I'm at work these few days.
- 1 participant shared: 'While traveling (commuting), I will take out my kindle to read instead of using phone to play game or surf social media.' This is a meaningful use of screens and technology.
- 1 participant shared: I also feel like I have more control of myself and have a lesser urge to use my phone. I don't immediately address notifications and messages now, I guess it feels more empowering in a way - Since their actions show they are adopting positive screen-time habits, I shared the Humansic Living concept and informed them that,
- Meaningful recreational screen-use can be defined as indulging in recreational screen activities with rationale, mindfulness and self-control that can have a net positive contribution to a person’s greater good and wellbeing, that are both rewarding and enjoyable in themselves.
- When an individual takes the three needs (harmonizing / balancing) into consideration for his daily actions (an example would be meaningful screen-use), it can be understand as he is living a Humansic Life. - All participants showed interest to continue adopting this Humansic lifestyle and they shared:
- It is important to maintain our social interaction with people and reducing our screen-time usage
- In a way, sometimes we also forget that simple thing that we do like using your phone, we don’t realise have much of a impact it have on our daily life and wellbeing until you are really aware of it then I think making a conscious effort to improve your lifestyle in a way. To get back to basic needs like sleep and balanced diet or stuff like that, I think it really helps in fulfilling the whole idea of balance.
- In order to adapt to this, it needs to be repeated to form my habit do this regularly and fatefully everyday so that you also get used to it. it will become a routine to help you to sleep or improve sleep quality.
- I used to study psychology in some of my modules so I do understand the Maslow Heirachy of needs. This involvement of technology have created new needs to be addressed. Now that I know, after learning from you, I felt that this is something new that we can incorporate into our needs for a more balanced lifestyle.
- I would because having to keep staring at screen is not good for health, because it make you less alert and you are like drowning in the screen. It is not healthy in a way. It might also reduce my thinking capability. It makes me dull.
- It is a good practice to adopt because it give me a better quality of sleep as people lose sleep due to phone usage.
- It is an important/vital aspect in order for someone to feel better physically emotionally and health. The foundation of the pyramid (Maslow) needs to be fulfilled for the structure to be stable so one can feel/perform better.
Discussion of findings is continued in this post.
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