Matt

Doin' things. Goin' Places.

[criddifer-blog]

So it doesn’t look like much - that’s probably because it isn’t. I’m currently stuck in the back end trying to get things changed so that they will be more powerful for the front end. Currently, you can ‘filter’ the output of the table. The plan for next update is to get a feedback system working.

A researcher will be able to send a push notification to a subject, and they can fill that in. It will all be tracked within the website. Information such as what they wrote, how long they took to write it, how long they took to open the link from the notification, how long they spent not writing anything whilst keeping the page open etc etc.

I am really enjoying this project, the research I have completed is both interesting and eye opening. The people I have met are very excited and enthusiastic about the whole subject area.

I’m currently just over half way through the project, and I’m making good progress.

Yes - I know the website looks terrible at the moment. But I’m a web developer, not a designer ;)

[criddifer-blog]

In to the unknown...

There are many unknowns in the area of Digital Addiction. The aim of my project is to not unlock the answers to these unknowns, but to provide a tool set for experts to better understand the problems and map them to the correct types of treatments.

Digital Addiction is getting a lot of attention in the media in recent years due to it’s seemingly negative impacts on young adults and even workplace activities. People are unable to ‘switch off’ from their online social lives or stick to their work hours.

There are many variables that need to be considered in Digital Addiction - luckily I do not have to present these in my thesis. But to give you an example; We may not consider a business persons email usage between work hours to be addictive, but how would it stack up if an unemployed person did that? You may argue that it would be addictive behavior from the unemployed person, but what if they were using email to send resumes to potential employers?

These are some of the variables I may have to consider when developing this back end system. What potentially would researchers/doctors want to know about their data subjects/patients?

...in spite of this increasing recognition of the phenomenon [Digital Addiction], there is still not enough data to decide whether the medium, in this case software and online space, has the main responsibility for addiction or whether personal characteristics is the genuine source and the medium is just a facilitator or a tool.

[criddifer-blog]

So it’s very early stages, but I’ve begun building the artifact for my Bachelor’s thesis - A digital addiction research and recovery tool.

The basis for my project is to provide researchers and doctors an information dashboard to review and manipulate ‘raw’ data from data subjects/patients in to more meaningful metrics. This information can then be used to implement strategies to overcome an addiction, or to model addictive behavior in technology and software.

I plan to include further updates on this as I progress.