Screen Time Human-Centered Design Workshop

Encourage participants to reflect on their weekly digital usage to create awareness and help them make good choices for their health and productivity.

Project Type: Graduate School Project for Human-Centered Design Class.

Timeline: November-December, 2021.

Role: Designer, Facilitator, Presenter.

Project Description: For this project, we were tasked with designing and facilitating a workshop to understand how screen time habits affect students, provide them with opportunities for to think critically about their weekly habits in order to leave participants with insights to help them restructure or reframe their digital usage. All participants reported that they had never paid close attention to their screen habits. Many experience screen fatigue, but still resort to screens to pass their free time.

Challenge: Students' screen time has increased significantly as a result of the pandemic, because of this, we designed a workshop that encouraged participants to reflect on their weekly digital usage and uncover how it affects their energy levels to help them make the right choices for their health and productivity. We originally planned to facilitate the workshop in person but had to pivot to an online format, and the unexpected shift gave us new opportunities to talk about screen time in a really relevant context, while on a screen with participants.

Solution: We led participants through the following list of online-friendly activities: Rose, Bud, Thorn, Weed; Idea Trees; Digital Life Assessment, all followed by a reflection period.

Results: Students are screen fatigued, but not all screen time is bad; People are used to being online so much that they do not give their habits much thought; Even when we offered a break and suggested stretching, walking around, etc. people spent time on their phones.

Screen Time Workshop Breakdown PDF

Cover Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash