The Goldilocks level of support: Using user reviews, ratings, and installation numbers to investigate digital self-control tools

Much effort has been invested in designing digital systems that keep people ‘hooked’. By contrast, comparatively little is known about how designers can support people in re-gaining control. Online, however, hundreds of apps and browser extensions promise to help people self-regulate use of digital devices. Reviews and popularity metrics for these digital self-control tools (DSCTs) can indicate which design patterns are useful in the wild. Moreover, they reveal how platforms like Android and iOS differ in the ecosystems they enable for DSCTs, which has important implications for end users. We analysed reviews, installation numbers, and ratings for 334 DSCTs on the Google Play, Chrome Web, and Apple App stores, investigating what user reviews reveal about usage contexts and key design challenges, and how functionality relates to popularity metrics. Our thematic analysis of 1,529 reviews (sampled from a data set of 53,978 distinct reviews scraped in March 2019) found that DSCTs are seen as highly important for focusing on less instantly rewarding tasks when digital distractions are easily available. Users seek DSCTs that adapt to their personal definitions of distraction, and provide support that is sufficient to change behaviour without feeling too coercive. Reviewers suggested combining design patterns to provide a level of support that is ‘just right’. This was mirrored in the ratings, where tools combined different types of design patterns (e.g., website blocking and goal reminders) tended to receive higher ratings than those implementing a single type. We discuss implications for research and design, including how design patterns in DSCTs interact, and how psychological reactance to DSCTs can be reduced.