Fighting for our attention, mobile application developers put marketing above our brains. Neuroethics consider smartphones to be a continuation of our mind, and this does not bother them at all.
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Mobile Applications Development Prospects
We are born cyborgs. We have created and use many technologies to help ourselves, and today we use the technology created by our mind to improve our own cognitive functions.
Useful applications
Your smartphone is able to cope with any routine task, such as memorizing a list of products for the store, your meetings, and important events.
The more effectively we unload our brains from cognitive tasks, shifting them onto the broad shoulders of electronic devices, the more intellectual power we can allow to develop what we need – creativity, breadth of thinking or improvement of will power.
The problem lies in the fact that both people and programmers tend to distort initially beautiful ideas.
Most existing software does not give priority to the utility. The main thing is to attract the user’s attention for as long as possible, either to sell them something directly or to sell them as consumers of countless marketing campaigns.
As a result, today there is a whole ecosystem of mobile applications that constantly demand and fight for your attention, and this, in turn, takes your time and resources from your cognitive health. You can read about such useful applications on the apppearl website.
Mobile app concept
If smartphones are meant as our assistants, not enemies, then the concept of modern mobile applications needs to be revised to ensure that the software respects the user’s attention and improves its cognitive functions.
Today, your smartphone behaves like a maniacal assistant, seeking to inform you about everything that happens in this world, regardless of the usefulness of this information.
Below are some development concepts that allow you to remake a smartphone into a useful helper before it transforms us into its slaves.
Smart application notifications
Imagine: you are at an important meeting and someone calls to your phone. Your smartphone knows that you are busy because it is aware of your work schedule.
Therefore, instead of a call, the smartphone interrupts it: ”Such a subscriber is now at a meeting. Press the unit to leave a message, press the deuce if the subscriber is needed urgently and the call will be made.”
Your mobile device can use the same for text and email messages, as well as for notifications from social networks, holding them until you are ready to read them.
Your phone can study your schedule and preferences, automatically blocking unnecessary calls and notifications while you are immersed in a work activity or in a hurry to finish an important matter in a certain period.
Infinite scrolling
Infinite scrolling is specifically designed to keep you at the screen of your smartphone for a longer time. Every time a new message pops up on the screen, your brain gets a small dose of dopamine – the hormone of happiness.
And it makes you scroll through the news feed or wall of the group, again and again, hoping to see at least something interesting and get some more happiness.
Our mobile apps are constantly deceiving our brains and attention. Mobile application development companies use the same tricks as the creators of casino gambling machines.
It is important for them to catch your attention as long as possible, just as a computer application needs to keep you going with endless scrolling in the hope that you will “catch hold of” something interesting.
Imagine if instead of constantly sending notifications and feeds, Facebook or any other social network would send a single message once a day, which would contain reports on the most important updates based on your preferences.
Imagine how wonderful it would be if you could tweak your social network so that only the options you need work. Suppose notifications about birthdays and invitations to certain events. Without intrusive options that are annoying, too carried away or take your time.
Or how nice it would be if when you try to log in to your social network account, your smartphone would have warned: “You were here recently, and nothing significant has happened since your last visit. Do you really want to continue?”.
Best human speech recognition
Probably, this opportunity will appear sooner or later anyway. But imagine how much easier it will now be to forget about important things, when you can immediately say out loud “do not forget to call your mother after work”, “call a taxi in an hour”, “mow the lawn today”, and your smartphone will automatically record and include these matters in your organizer.
Applications today
For today’s applications, it is important to save the user’s attention, however, the overwhelming number of developers do not have an incentive to make changes to the well-established concept of today’s mobile applications.
A push is needed that will make it clear to the creators that the software should put the user’s utility first or they will lose them.
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