I published the following essay as part of my thesis project at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Proposing a Mobile Mindful Facebook

Never have individuals been so connected around the globe and around the clock. It is easier now than ever before to connect and engage with people — people you know, people you may know, and people you may have never had the opportunity to meet without technology. Facebook facilitates this interpersonal interaction, allowing individuals to engage with their communities, organize social events, and keep in touch with friends and family around the globe.

As beneficial a tool Facebook may be, the social network is not perfect. As a for-profit corporation, Facebook wants to be used by you, your family, and your friends. All the time. The more users browsing, the more money Facebook collects from advertisers. Facebook requires a hefty yearly revenue to pay over 17,000 global employees, and to fund a variety of projects in the product pipeline.

From a business perspective, Facebook is incredibly successful.

In 2016, the company brought in a staggering $27.6B. Nearly 97% of this revenue came purely from advertising. [2] Were it not for the advertisements snuggled on the sidebar, sponsored posts tucked between friends’ posts on the newsfeed and the staggering number of users viewing them (1.28 billion daily active users in Q1 2017), Facebook would be nowhere close to the empire it has become.

Facebook makes money off of the time users invest in the product. The more users use Facebook, the more money Facebook makes. So why not design a product that users want to use all the time? Various design decisions lend to the feeling that Facebook is entertaining, but “addicting”, “cluttered” and “a waste of time.” Constant notifications, endless news feeds and an always-on sensibility encourage constant distraction and hinder productive work. Through a number of user interviews, I discovered that many feel “mindless” as they browse Facebook. Interestingly enough, they are aware of their own mindlessness as they scroll through the News Feed. They just can’t seem to get remove themselves from the app.

It’s easy to feel like the company sees you as nothing more than a dollar sign. But the company is not a single omniscient being. Facebook itself is composed of people. Statistically, not all of these individuals can be a gaggle of sociopaths with the intention of brainwashing the masses. That said, Facebook employees only account for .0013% of Facebook’s daily active users. While this expanding team may have an astute, researched understanding of how the global user base operates, they are a minute fraction of the app’s entire population.

Each design decision the team makes is incredibly powerful in affecting over a billion people every day. If 1 billion users spent a 20 minutes per day browsing, the population would be spending a combined 121.6 billion hours on Facebook each year. That’s 333 million hours per day. And considering most users spend an estimated 50+ minutes a day using Facebook, this is a modest fraction of the truth. This equates to over 340 hours per year, per individual. If time is money, that is a hell of a lot of cash to spend.

What amazing things could users be doing with their time if they weren’t spending all of their time on Facebook?

What if Facebook’s design team focused not on maximizing the number of hours spent on Facebook? Could a behemoth company shift their focus towards helping users spend their time well? Is it feasible for Facebook’s designers to encourage users to put down their phones and do something meaningful? At the very least, could Facebook be used as a tool to help users become more mindful of the ways in which they spend their time? And, for the company’s sake, could Facebook afford to give up some of their users’ time, while maintaining revenue opportunities for advertisers? Is it at all possible for Facebook to benefit from encouraging users to spend their time elsewhere?

Could Facebook give up a fraction of the user-hours they consume, and instead encourage users to spend their time well?

Through a series of interviews, I sought to better understand how a subset of users integrates Facebook into their lives. What do they like about Facebook, and what do they dislike? What’s working, what isn’t? What is frustrating about the experience, and what is pleasurable?
From my research with users, three common frustrations surfaced among their testimonies.

1. Information Overload

Users are inundated with information on Facebook. Photos, statuses, links, videos, ads… Whether you like it or not, you’re going to find yourself under a mountain of content begging to be consumed.

• The newsfeed is often overloaded with people you hardly know and posts you don’t care to see. But it doesn’t matter, you’re hooked and keep scrolling.

• You scroll, scroll, scroll, until you come across a post you’ve already seen. You might keep scrolling. You might also tap over to the convenient video tab. Before you know it, you’re browsing “suggested for you” clips featuring face mask reviews and heroic lab rats.

How can designers maintain a stream of relevant content while focusing on what users truly care about? How much of what appears on the news feed do users really care about?

2. Attention Absorption

Scrolling through this content takes up valuable time that you could expend more productively. Yet, you may feel your attention on Facebook and the content you are missing, even when you are not currently browsing. In other words, intense FOMO.

• A ping and a red notification dot begs for your attention. You resist, insistent upon finishing your 10-page paper first. But you hear a second ping and give in, only to reveal a page you don’t care about just shared an Instagram photo.

• You often lose track of time while scrolling. A five-minute work break often turns into twenty minutes or more of browsing.

• Floods of content scroll down the page, and you can’t seem to recall any of it an hour later.

It’s easy to blame the user for a lack of self control. What responsibility can the designer take for the user’s use of time? How can designers give the user more autonomy to exit the rabbit hole, or avoid it in the first place?

3. Profile Maintenance

After a user has had their Facebook for more than a few years, their experience starts to require a bit of housekeeping. You want to enjoy your experience with Facebook, but now it takes too much effort to maintain. Users may consider deleting their account and starting over. Yet, the frustrations outweigh the benefits. It might be nice to clear out unflattering photos and so-called “friends” in one swoop. But the benefits are outweighed by irritations. It may not be worthwhile to go through re-friending people you want to connect with, retagging flattering photos, reconnecting external accounts you use throughout the week.

• You clicked “like” on one too many fan pages a few years ago, and now you receive updates you don’t care about. Deleting pages one-by-one is time consuming.

• You somehow managed to grow your friends list to over 3,000 — you don’t even know that many people! Manually deleting individuals is a hassle, so you stick it out.

• You no longer want to be tagged in a series of questionable photos from your early college days. It becomes a chore going back and untagging yourself from each and every photo.

As Facebook has become a virtually essential part of modern communication, simply deleting your account isn’t a reasonable option to clear the clutter. This leaves users feeling stuck and joyless, using Facebook out of necessity rather than choice.

How can users clear out their digital closets simply and effectively? Might users feel better about using a product that provides assistance, even if what they want runs divergent to business need?

Solutions

Based on these specific user issues, I’ve identified three potential solutions to create a more meaningful, user-oriented Facebook experience.

1. What’s Up?

What’s Up? provides an efficient and convenient means of staying up-to-date on your closest friends. What’s Up? simplifies the saturated flow of content from the News Feed in a quick digest featuring updates and content directly from your friends.

• In the vein of Twitter’s “while you were away," showing you the most important posts from your closest friends since you last logged on.

• Includes people you specify, and 10-15 posts receiving the most overall engagement from your friends

• Offers a brief, consumable dose of Facebook

• It is easy to add additional friends and favorite topics to the digest.

• Only see Posts from friends, no "liked" links or sponsored content.

• "Brought to you by..." advertisement featured at the end. No ads exist within the experience.

2. Mindful Mode

Although we may try, it’s impossible to constantly stay updated with what’s going on with everybody. Want to take a breather, but still need access to Facebook’s key features like Messenger, Events and Groups? Mindful Mode temporarily eliminates distractions so you can use Facebook productively.

• 30 min ad-free browsing by default, with options to extend or shorten the period.

• Sponsored by a selected advertiser relevant to a positive mindset, e.g. Headspace.

• Facebook notifications are silenced and do not appear for the duration of Mindful Mode.

• Newsfeed is throttled, similarly to What's Up?

• Trending News stories are inaccessible from search

• Tab bar is reorganized to display groups and events you are attending.

3. Maintenance Improvements

We all need a refresher every once in a while. If you’ve had a Facebook profile for more than a few years, maintenance can become overwhelming. A new settings module allows users to clean up their profile quickly and efficiently, so that you can put your best self forward.

• New, easily accessible settings module

• Old posts can be cleared out with a swipe

• Quickly unfriend people you no longer wish to connect with.

• Unfollow pages directly from the news feed, or from a list of those you interact with the least.

Moving Forward…

The concepts above are simple mockups in their current state. More user testing is required to determine their feasibility and potential to spark change in the way we design and interact with digital interfaces.

Through my research, I’m reminded of one of Facebook’s many internal mottos: “Nothing … is someone else’s problem.” Indeed, Facebook cannot fix every problem for every user. Facebook’s role is not to parent and tell users what to do. Facebook cannot cure boredom or force productivity in the office. If a user wants to blow away hours at a time scrolling through the news feed, Facebook cannot, and should not, tell them to use their time differently.

With that in mind, Facebook acts as a shepherd for over two billion people. It is the designer’s ethical duty to urge users in a positive direction. Facebook can make design decisions to achieve their business goals while still encouraging users to maintain a healthy relationship with the social network. Of course the user can dive into the rabbit hole if they please. But rather than immediately ushering them in, designers can and should provide the choice to sidestep these time traps.

As the “off” button of pervasive technologies become more difficult to find, the designer’s discretion is of utmost importance in defining our future interactions with technology.

Based on pre-existing popular social networks, Mindful Marketing seeks to explore innovative solutions for empathetic user interface + user experience. Through analysis of contemporary technology trends, consumer research and near future projections, Mindful Marketing proposes thoughtful prototypes designed to respect the user’s digital agency while increasing self-awareness and intentionality of mobile device use. The prototypes encourage product designers and marketers to honor their users’ time and utilize ethical and empowering design principles without sacrificing revenue opportunities.

Mindful Marketing is inspired by Time Well Spent, a non-profit movement founded by former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris. Time Well Spent is a Silicon Valley-based movement to align technology with humanity. You can learn more about the initiative and join the cause here.