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Design Studio 1 - Context

Overview

For one week, I logged every single time that I interacted with my phone in an attempt to get a deeper understanding of my phone as an object of my attention. Below is an interactive map that serves as a spatial visualization of this, showing where and why I used my phone across the week. Each pin represents an instance of phone use, and the pins are color coded by the reason why I opened my phone. Click the top left toggle to see the color code. The URL at the bottom of each pin is a photo of what my surroundings looked like when my attention went to my phone.

Underneath the map is a short video essay I created made entirely of images, videos, audio, and songs that I captured immediately after opening my phone throughout the week. If you hear something, whether it is a random conversation or a bossa nova song, it was playing during a video, an audio recording, or while I was recording my screen.

Interactive Map

Video Essay

Process Documentation

1. Context & Motivation

In the Design Studio 1 course we were given this prompt:

  • Choose a context of interest (socio-bio-techno-political, both physical and/or digital, etc.). Develop a site-specific research methodology to study this context from a 1PP approach.
  • Develop an audiovisual essay (90s), showing 50 images of your 1PP research defining the field of action of your context of interest * Explain your methodology: how, where, why

I had started that class by sharing this design bet: “Open-source, 3D-printed biofeedback devices for at-home attention training could increase attention span and sustained focus by 200% without medical intervention”.

I didn’t feel attached to the design bet, but using attention as my starting point I decided to explore the link between my attention and my phone.

I feel like how I attend to my phone feels unaligned with how I want to be attending to my phone. My phone functions as a useful tool, but also as a black hole, sucking in my attention when I would rather it be elsewhere.

My research goal was to explore my phone as and object of my attention through a first-person, data-driven approach.

2. Research Design

Approach: 1PP (first-person perspective), where I was both the subject and the researcher.

Duration: One week (October 11–18, 2025).

Method: Self-tracking experiment using a custom iPhone Shortcut to log contextual and intentional data every single time I interacted with my phone, even if it was just to check the time.

Tools I Used:

  • iPhone

  • Apple Shortcuts app

  • Attention Logger (the shortcut I created to collect the data)

  • iCloud (for storing data)

  • Google Sheets (for logging data)

  • Google My Maps (for visualization)

  • ChatGPT (for co-developing Attention Logger, uploading the map, and analyzing data)

  • Link to the conversation is in the “Links and Resources” section at the bottom of the page.

3. Data Collection Process

Every time I opened my phone and ran the Shortcut, it automatically:

(1) Logged the date and time.

(2) Logged my GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude).

(3) Asked why I was using my phone (which I then filled in manually).

(4) Prompted me to take a photo of my immediate surroundings.

(5a) 1/12 of the time: prompted for a video recording.

(5b) 1/12 of the time: prompted for an audio recording.

(5c) 1/12 of the time: waited 30 seconds, then, if I was still on my phone, prompted a screen recording.

4. Data Processing

After a week of collecting data, I standardized the “why” column (e.g., “txt,” “text,” and “whatsapp” all categorized under “messaging”). Then, I uploaded the resulting data to Google My Maps, where each pin on the map represents an instance of phone use. The pins are color coded by the reason I opened my phone.

Here is a summary of how many times I used my phone for each category: Data visualization showing phone usage per category

The URL at the bottom of each pin is a photo of what my surroundings looked like when my attention went to my phone.

The final map serves as a spatial visualization of attention, showing where and why I used my phone across the week. Feel free to look around!

5. Limitations

  • The shortcut app didn’t always work. Sometimes it just didn’t run (I’m not sure why). It also needed an internet connection to log my coordinates, so whenever I was on the train or in airplane mode it either didn’t work or was delayed.

  • Sometimes I just forgot to use it. More so at the beginning of the week than toward the end.

  • Because I had to remember to run it each time (being both the researcher and the subject), I’m sure it biased how I used my phone. It definitely wasn’t a perfect reflection of my baseline behavior before the experiment.

  • It only tracked when I opened my phone, not how long I was on it for. Time spent on the phone feels like an important data point, and that wasn’t collected at all.

  • On a similar note, the app only asked why I opened my phone at the start, but sometimes I’d open it to answer a message and then end up doomscrolling Reddit. It would have been better if the shortcut had checked in every 30 seconds or minute to see if I was still on my phone and asked again what I was doing at that point.

  • I also wanted it so that when you click on a pin in the map, the picture I took pops up. It turns out that Google My Maps isn’t really good at that, so I had to live with just keeping a clickable URL. Still, I would’ve liked the UX better if it showed the image inline.

6. Observations

I tried to prompt ChatGPT to process the data for me and get behavioral insights around my phone use. Unfortunately, it kept on crashing and I didn’t have the time to run an excel script to parse through the spreadsheet before writing this. I was curious to see if the time of the day had an effect on the reason my attention went to my phone, if any of the reasons led to bursts of using the phone (measured by a lot of pick ups in a short time frame), and if where I was had an effect on what I used the phone for (more specifically, if I used it for different things at home vs at school vs at a train station, etc)

I think I’ll go revisit these if I have some free time later.

A few observations:

  • I would have really benefitted from the shortcut prompting me every 30-60s after opening my phone to see where my attention had shifted to. There were plenty of times that I opened my phone to send a text and then found myself scrolling Reddit or checking my emails.

  • Messaging, Camera, and Clock accounted for more than 50% of the times my attention went to my phone. I’ve always hated the idea of an apple watch, but I wonder if using it for the clock and messaging functions would keep me off my phone, and thus less likely to start using it for random things.

  • Using my phone to call was one of the lowest on there. That surprised me.

  • Using my phone for “no reason” which also included “bored” was the 5th most common reason. I wish I was able to track usage after opening because I am curious if it also led to the most random usage afterwards

Last update: December 1, 2025