omega - Overgrown

System Architecture Diagram

Project Overview

Problem: People doomscrolling tend to lose track of time, causing them to waste more time than they intended on social media apps.

Target Audience: Teens and young adults who struggle with time management

Screentime control apps exist, but they have some shortfalls:

Immediate cutoff/Interval reminders: These are jarring reminders of time that has passed, which may reinforce the feeling of uselessness individuals feel for wasting so much time, making them return to scrolling for a quick dopamine rush and escape the feeling
Easy to swipe away or ignore
Lack of positive reinforcement when users display desired behaviour

Overgrown tackles these shortfalls by having slow, consistent flower growth onscreen, reminding users of the time passing. These flowers only despawn after a set amount of time away from the app, which makes it easier for the user to disengage from social media. We also implemented a streak and friends system to enhance their experience and incorporate positive reinforcement for continued lack of doomscrolling.

How we built it

Overgrown is built in Android Studio with Kotlin, which communicates with Supabase via PostgrestSQL for backend data storage. We used the AccessibilityServices API to detect app usage, which is then used to calculate the streaks and manage the growth of flowers on screen.

Key Functionalities

Time Reminder

Gradual growth of flowers across the screen, without impeding use until time limit is reached
Selected app is unusable until after 15 minutes is spent disengaged
Customization for which apps to moderate and time taken to fully block screen

Reward System

Users gain a streak when they spend less than 30 minutes consecutive scrolling on moderated apps in a day
The streak gradually unlocks cosmetics to choose different flower designs

Profile and Friendship System

Users can add each other based on a unique FriendID
Total and current streak can be shared with friends to encourage each other to maintain streaks of healthier behaviour