I had the pleasure to be a speaker in the global Women Tech Conference in 2021, with a session titled “Unhooked: How to spot and reverse addictive technologies”. In the session I covered topics such as persuasive tech, behavior design, digital addiction, and design ethics.
As this is such an important topic and we need more people to increase their knowledge and get involved, I’ve prepared a list of resources anyone interested in the topic can go through below.
Design Principles and Resources
Calm Tech – create technology with calmness and slow pace principles in mind
Humane-centered Design Principles by the Center for Humane Technology
Abusability testing by Platformabuse.org – check if your product is causing harm
Cognitive biases infographic and list with explanation from Wikipedia
Documentaries
Humane Tech Organizations
The Centre for Humane Technology
List with all known humane-tech organizations, created by All Tech is Human
Books
Hooked by Nir Eyal
Influence the psychology of persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Ruined by design by Mike Monteiro
The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
Digital Detox Apps
Forest App – plants trees while you focus
Freedom – app and website blocker
Goodnight Chrome – sets a schedule to block night use of Chrome
Flipd – accountability partner and app blocker
Moment – tracks how much time you spend on your phone
Antisocial – compare your smartphone usage with your peers
Screen Stopwatch – a wallpaper that updates real-time with the time you’ve spent on your phone
Off the Grid – block your phone and send auto-reply messages
Checky – counts the amount of times you check your phone every day
This list is a work in progress and will be continuously updated. Do you have some more resources you would like to share? Send me an email at sofia.michili@gmail.com and I’ll update this blog post to include them.
