One Screen and 50+ Shades of Gray
Always by my side, laughing while eating lunch or holding hands on a stroll around the block. We were inseparable, to the point where I would feel nervous if I was too far away. But, overdependency is never a good thing. Time for a change.
It didn’t limit all temptation, but I clearly started to look at my phone as a tool and less of a means of entertainment. Messages, and calls, yes. Endless scrolling, no.
I switched my phone screen to a monochrome display for a week. I enabled some developer settings on my smartphone and switched my normally vibrant screen to endless shades of gray.
The inspiration for this came out of my desire to fight the built-in temptation that cell phones and App-developers rely on for generating income. I disabled notifications for some of the less functional apps, and no longer received the luscious desirable red notification icons that are hard to resist.
Colour plays a huge role in the way that these systems are developed, to the point where I started to notice that certain features were actually inaccessible for individuals with the inability to distinguishes between certain colours.
My phone has a notification icon which is a small LED on the top left corner above the screen. The phone boasts eight different colours for notifications that can be customized so your peripheral vision locks onto them the second you receive a useless notification that someone liked your recent photo of your lunch. A great idea, but not a fully accessible solution.
Certain colours evoke particular emotions. We subconsciously know this every time we look at an advertisement, or a company logo or symbol. Think of a few company logos and what they mean to you. Do any of the associations overlap with the descriptions below?
Red: lust, power, excitement, love, speed, anger.
Blue: masculine, competence, higher quality, corporate, reliability.
Violet/purple: authority, sophistication, power.
Green: good taste, envy, eco-friendly, health, money.
Yellow: Competence, happiness, inexpensive, low quality.
To be fair, the list above is based on a wikipedia article called “color psychology,” but I think the point is clear. Colours have a much more powerful impact than just “looking nice.” Many social media and photo sharing platforms now have embedded advertisements in the content that users are scrolling through. The perfect combination of colours and brightness draw the eye and divert attention from the main materials we intended to view.
After a week of having a gray screen I noticed my eyes were drawn to contrast between dark and light. A photo of colourful field of flowers was pale in comparison to a square plain building with a darker and a lighter side. The added perspective will help with my photography when trying to tell a story that is more accessible.
I was less likely to scroll for my next dopamine rush, and more likely to actively think and plan how I intended to use my smartphone. With a gray screen, the app icons more or less blended in with the screen so my eye was never drawn to a particular icon, and I found my eyes were more drawn to the name of the app as opposed to the normally bright attractive colours.
The challenge with the monochrome screen is that some functionality relies on the interpretation and full vision of colours.
Did the message send? Is the notification gray or highlighted blue? Is it a green bar, or a red bar? Is the emoji a blue face for sad or red face because the weather is so warm? How does the pie chart match up with the legend?
After one week I realized that for individuals who can not distinguish the difference between particular colours there must be even more challenges than the ones I experienced.
Smartphones have a lot of advantages and bennefits, but true innovation must push the envelope to expand the possibilities. An extra camera on a phone is not going to solve the worlds problems, but acknowledging our limitations might be a start.
After a week, I switched my phone back to a full colour screen; it was overwhelming. There were so many colours jumping out at me. It felt hard to focus, and it felt less like a tool and more like a demanding obligation. So, my phone is back to monochrome. It is simpler that way, and if I need more functionality, I’ll sit down at a computer and actively pursue a particular task.
I am pondering what my next experiment will be. My old QWERTY keyboard phone? Maybe it is a good thing that pagers no longer exist. Can you imagine anyone in the world being able to buzz you expecting an immediate reply?
~~~
Nathan Cohen - 13 September 2021
~~~
Follow @theengineeringnomad on Instagram for more stories and photos.
Subscribe to the Engineering Nomad using this link via Feeds Burner or click the button below for a .xml file for your feed.