Broadcastr - What happens when we show to our surroundings what we do on our smartphones?

Sammanfattning: Smartphones are capable of a multitude of things, yet it is still common to hear about the smartphone as a whole as being harmful to humans. In order to challenge the perception of smartphones as harmful, a concept was manifested in the form of seven iterations of prototypes. The concept, called Broadcastr, revolved around broadcasting to one's immediate surroundings what one was doing on one's smartphone. While continuously developing the prototypes, the concept was evaluated by the researcher. Evaluation occurred both in the process of prototyping itself as well as by exposing it to other people. The final design consisted of a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which was connected to an Android app via Bluetooth. The Android app ran in the background and monitored whether a new app was activated by the smartphone user. When this happened, a message was sent to the Raspberry Pi, which would display an icon on a 0.9" 128x64 OLED display, which corresponded to the category of the app being activated. It was found that the prototype showed an indication of being capable of challenging perceptions of the smartphone as being harmful, and that it became a useful tool for others to know what the smartphone user was doing. Finally, two possible future research projects were presented. One project would focus on another type of device's activity being broadcasted, while the other would introduce the broadcasting device to a high school class to study its effects.