The Planning Phone is a type of modular phone. It is a circular phone that on its own only offers applications for calling, messaging, and taking photos. Additional applications such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and so on can be added by placing segments onto the sides of the phone, though this is restricted to a maximum of four applications at a time–one application per quadrant. These segments also use lights to indicate how much time can be spent on the application. Users can add up to three segments of one application on top of each other, to increase the amount of time they can spend on the application. In that sense, increasing the time available for application use on the Planning Phone makes it more challenging to physically handle the phone.
For this study, the details of the Planning Phone were intentionally left ambiguous in terms of manufacturability or exactly how much time each segment represents. Instead, the main qualities of planned and restricted use (both physically and over time) were embodied by its design.
Year ::: March 2021 – March 2022
Context ::: Research | Academic
Collaboration ::: ITU Copenhagen (IxD Lab) and Design Department of Politecnico di Milano
Team ::: Prof. Laurens Boer, Prof. Tom Jenkins, PhD Mila Stepanović
Read more ::: Mila Stepanovic, Laurens Boer and Tom Jenkins. 2022. Reconfiguring the Smartphone Use to Support Intentional Use. In Proceedings of ACM NordiCHI’22. October 8–12, 2022, Aarhus, Denmark. https://doi.org/10.1145/3546155.3546675.
