Ongoing

Nowadays, several tools for monitoring and controlling smartphone usage and achieving "digital wellbeing" exist. These Digital Self-Control Tools (DSCTs) allow users to track their smartphone use and to define interventions, e.g., timers and app blockers, to self-regulate their behavior with the smartphone. Unfortunately, the mechanisms employed in such tools are often not effective in the long-term. A more promising approach is to have a DSCT able to act as a proactive, yet personalized, learning support on how to use the smartphone in a better way.

The goal of this thesis is to conduct an extensive evaluation of this approach. To do so, the student will start from a previously-developed Android app and he/she will refine, review, and simplify it. The realized Android app will be, then, used in a months-long user study to assess the long-term efficacy of the adopted approach. Eventually, results from this assessment will be analyzed and a set of recommendations will be produced.

The outcomes of the work, if satisfying and appropriate, will be made freely available as open source/open data.


Candidate

Tommaso Natta

Thesis Details

Luigi De Russis, Alberto Monge Roffarello
Master Degree in Computer Engineering
2021-10-08