Reducing Risk in Digital Self-Control Tools: Design Patterns and Prototype

Many users take advantage of digital self-control tools to self-regulate their device usage through interventions such as timers and lockout mechanisms. One of the major challenges faced by these tools is the user reacting against their self-imposed constraints and abandoning the tool. Although lower-risk interventions would reduce the likelihood of abandonment, previous research on digital self-control tools has left this area of study relatively unexplored. In response, this paper contributes two foundational principles relating risk and effectiveness; four widely applicable novel design patterns for reducing risk of abandonment of digital self-control tools (continuously variable interventions, anti-aging design, obligatory bundling of interventions, and intermediary control systems); and a prototype digital self-control tool that implements these four low-risk design patterns.