Y://YOUR TIME ONLINE
Summary
Your Time Online is a project that focuses on using traditional technology in tandem with digital technology to help people build healthier relationships with the online world and assist them in becoming more aware of how the internet impacts their lives. The end goal is to help people expand their positive interactions with the internet and minimize their negative interactions. According to Statista about 71% of surveyed respondents reported being negatively impacted by the media that they were engaging with online while in a survey from the National Institute of Health, three out of four respondents stated that they had negative experiences from seldomly to more frequently. Your Time Online works to address these experiences through reflective meditation strategies based on external research and internal observations in addition to gamification mechanics. With Your Time Online, the end user would be able to track which sites and apps they have spent time on, review what kind of interactions they are engaging in, and how the internet is improving or hindering their life.
Process
There are two components to Your Time Online. The first component is the journal, and the second component is the app. However, we will first go into detail about the app since it is the supporting element to the journal. The Your Time Online digital app is a program which can help you track where you spend your time online, hash out the thoughts you put out onto the internet, record voice notes if you are not available to type out your thoughts or write them in your physical journal, keep backup digital copies of writings in your physical journal, provide notifications to remind you to journal, and mark your progress with a fun gamification system that sees the end user growing an infinite flower bed as they reach their goals. The app is an offline localized experience and does not require the end user to have an internet connection unless they want the AI companion review feature which functions in a manner akin to Grammarly. It will allow your bird companion to review your messages and give you feedback on them to ensure that you are putting positive and healthy messages out onto the web.
Reflection
Using the Your Time Online journal seeks to help the end user to not only become more personally conscious of how they are engaging with the internet, but it will also help them think more broadly about how the internet impacts their physical well-being, emotions, and other properties of their mental health. This also means that the end user will then be more aware of the pitfalls that can come with using the internet which they can in turn share with family and friends. Even once the journal has ran its course for a years’ time and the end user decides to maybe not purchase a new version of it, the meditations and information that the end user gleans from the journal will have helped them build long term strategies to manage their time on the internet, analyze how they choose to interact in different situations, inquire about what services they decide to support, and more. In the exhibition space, visitors will be able to get hands on experience with the Your Time Online journal to see what strategies and theories it employs and how it can help them gain a better understanding of the internet and how it impacts their lives. The exhibition should illustrate that humans have the ability and power to take back control of their time online and their autonomy in the relationship that they have with the internet. The app can be viewed here.