One thing’s for sure about mobile technology – it helps us stay connected to what matters to us, from anywhere in the world. We can stay connected to our work, getting real-time updates and keeping in touch with associates; we can stay connected to our family, reaching out to feel their presence no matter what the distance; we can stay connected to what’s fun, watching sports events or television shows right as they happen.
Echo prizes this connectivity, but also seeks to ensure that this connectivity doesn’t become overwhelming to our users. The interfaces we produce prize being informative without being distracting, since mobile distraction can have serious consequences; according to one study, at any given daylight moment in America over 660,000 drivers are texting while driving. Texting while driving takes your eyes off of the road for an average of five seconds per text, which at a speed of 55 miles per hour is means that you’ll travel the length of a football field while being no better than blindfolded.
Smartphone distraction can have serious consequences even when the user themselves are not the ones driving; in 2016, a 15 year old girl in Augsburg, Germany was struck and killed by a tram when she crossed the street without looking up from her mobile device. In response to this, the city implemented a system of streetlights in the sidewalk pavement itself, designed specifically to catch the eye of people who are looking down at their phone while walking towards the intersection. The Dutch town of Bodegraven followed suit this year. Critics claim that such installations will actually incentivize people to look at their phones while walking around, sending a message that irresponsibility is basically okay. However, even if the basic premise of incentivizing irresponsibility is granted, traffic lights on the ground would nevertheless be warranted. Pedestrian accidents are not a gradual thing, where someone who walks 20% of the way into the street sustains a 20% injury, but instead are all-or-nothing situations that can not regulate themselves without grievous injury or fatality. Smartphones certainly seem to be here to stay, and adjusting our infrastructure accordingly would be in the best interest of everybody.
Smartphone distraction can also have negative consequences in the domain of entertainment – for many smartphone users their first instinct upon encountering something significant is to whip out their phone as quickly as possible to document it. This, of course, takes them out of the experience that they’re seeking to document. It can also take others out of the experience too – smartphone usage at concert events can be a scourge, not only possibly leaking copyrighted material but also blocking the view of the unfortunate people standing behind the person doing the recording. In a step to mitigate this, the startup Yondr has created a simple system that locks smartphones within a certain area. Their solution is a simple pocket-size bag that attendees place their phones in, a bag that locks when the attendees are in a certain area. If the attendee wants or needs to use their device again for whatever reason they simply leave the zone and the bag unlocks.
These measures are all a part of a growing effort to make our world receptive to the changing ways in which we live – from ensuring that we actually stay alive to helping make sure that we love the real life that we live, steps such as these are likely to be see much more and to greater and greater good in the future.
