5 ms·
Every time I pick up my phone to check a piece of information or complete a simple task, I am presented with some other distraction that threatens to sidetrack
by yosito 7y ago
Every time I pick up my phone to check a piece of information or complete a simple task, I am presented with some other distraction that threatens to sidetrack me. When I don't want to be distracted, I often leave my phone in another room, turn it off, put it in a bag or even leave home without it. I've often thought of creating my own eink devices with focused purposes to help me get the information I need, while avoiding the distraction of a multipurpose device like a phone.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 7y agoI would challenge the notion that the information is really needed.
- derefr 7y ago> Every time I pick up my phone to check a piece of information or complete a simple task, I am presented with some other distraction that threatens to sidetrack me. Feels like a very good use of ML on the part of the mobile OS makers would be to decide, based on place and time and activity history, which of your active widgets should appear above the fold on the lockscreen of your phone. (E.g., when near a bus stop, next-bus times should appear. First thing in the morning after the phone has been inactive all night, the "summary of the calendar events for today" widget should appear. Weather should appear ~5 minutes before you usually leave the house, if-and-only-if there's something useful to know, e.g. rain predicted for today. Etc.) I know iOS has "Siri Suggestions", which is similar, but these are activity-history-corrleated tap-to-open links for apps, not specific actionable at-a-glance information. I think Google Glass tried to do this?
- renewiltord 7y agoI'm pretty sure Android puts these in the soft notifications area with the right settings.
- wlesieutre 7y agoI don't know that machine learning is the best approach for presenting contextually available information. If you just base it on usage patterns and have a problem with distractions, it's very easy to end up with "You're doing literally anything, do you want to open reddit/twitter/facebook?" But my iPhone does automatically pop up my grocery store membership card on the lock screen when I'm at the grocery store, and my boarding pass when I'm at the airport. I think that's currently done via Wallet and may not help with bus schedules, but a more curated approach does have some value.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoBasically every kind of ML of this kind has pissed me off. It never knows exactly what I want and every time it gets it wrong it leads to a very negative experience. I much prefer dumb and predictable UI vs black box ML UI that doesn't know exactly what I want.
- amelius 7y agoYes, plus now Google or some other BigCorp has to know exactly what you are doing all the time.
- yosito 7y ago> Feels like a very good use of ML on the part of the mobile OS makers... The thing is, mobile OS makers, especially the ones with huge investments in data and ML, have a conflict of interest. A large majority of them are in the business of monetizing your attention and the data they can collect about you, not just helping you focus on what's most important to you. This is a really good case for free/open OSes, and ML projects. But the resources needed to develop free and open software are much scarcer because they tend to be harder to monetize / not as profitable.
- battery_cowboy 7y agoI liked Star Trek, where pads were commodity hardware and you'd have one for each task or report. Seems crazy at first, but it would really help with focus.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoYup. The way I understood it, PADDs weren't owned - they were just passed around, and circulated around the ship. I don't think it was ever shown, but I imagine that e.g. at the end of the day, the captain would wipe the 20-ish PADDs with reports accumulated over the day, and someone would later pick them up and carry somewhere others could pick them up again. All of this could theoretically work better with our current technology - Internet, digital documents, file exchange systems; no need to pass around physical devices. Except somehow, it doesn't.
- battery_cowboy 7y agoI think the "cloud" is helping to make it seamless to go from iPad to desktop to phone with one work item (like a report for work), but it's not quite there yet, I agree. (I think in the Star Trek universe you would just reclaim the PADD in the replicator once you're fully done with it rather than move it around to some central "PADD library", right?)
- TeMPOraL 7y agoWithin an ecosystem (MS-only, Apple-only) it sorta works; much worse, if you need something from outside, then it doesn't. RE replicators, you're right! I don't know why I haven't thought about it. PADDs are very simple as electronics go (even as today's standards go). DS9 showed people recycling dishes and food through a replicator, so the same would work for PADDs.