Put Down Your Phone or This App Will Destroy (Virtual) Towns

I've been traveling a lot on concern recently, which always impacts my sleep routine. A combination of unfamiliar night noises in strange hotel rooms, multiple fourth dimension zones, and—aye, I admit—checking my phone when I should be sleeping, has disrupted my slumber cycle.

So when I got back to Los Angeles, I downloaded SleepTown, an app designed to form healthy sleep patterns via a unique, virtual urban center-building technique. I liked it and then much I tracked down the team behind it, Taiwan-based SeekrTech, which also created time-management app Forest.

Hither are excerpts of my e-mail chat with Ting-Yu (Amy) Cheng, cofounder of SeekrTech, followed by my experience testing out the SleepTown app.

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You lot met boyfriend co-founder Shao-Kan Pi while you were both getting your Masters in Computer Science at National Tsing Hua University, a inquiry university located in Hsinchu City, Taiwan. What inspired you to start building productivity apps?
Forest was built-in in 2022, when we were all the same graduate students in Taiwan. Phone habit has been a well-known phenomenon in the era of smartphones. People kept browsing on their phones and wasting time instead of focusing on important things in their lives. As reckoner science major students, we believed that we could build a simple app to help people prevent themselves from being glued to their phones.

At first, nosotros came up with a strict approach. We tried making an app that "locks" users' phones for a period of time. Simply information technology seemed as well restricted and put extensive pressure on our users. So we came up with another approach: a soft phone locker. Instead of locking users' phones, Forest lets users plant a tree when they want to put down their phones for a while.

Why do y'all think the planting digital trees option worked so well?
Considering users had to impale their growing trees if they wanted to use their phones before the timer was up.

No 1 wants to kill a tree.
Agreed. Then, with a tree growing, the sense of achievement and responsibility drives the users to stay away from their smartphones on their ain. And that's what makes Woods stand up out among other time-direction apps.

And so you lot started planting forests IRL, correct?
Aye. Since the virtual objects that stand for the focused time in Forest are copse, it gave us the idea of planting real copse on the Earth, which is a unique feature in Forest. When our users redeem existent copse with the virtual coins they earned by staying focused, we donate to a existent-tree-planting organization, Copse for the Time to come, to plant real trees.

Can you share whatsoever stats?
Since launch in 2022, Forest has helped users salve over 65 million hours and planted 200,000+ real trees. Forest has striking the acme 1 slot in productivity app categories in 121 countries, been in the top 10 paid app department in 102 countries, featured in 100+ countries' App Stores, including the main page and productivity category; was chosen as "Best Apps of Google Play" for 2 years straight, and Apple also included us in their App Store's TV advertisement, Amazing Apps [in 2022].

It seems as if you've hit on a winning combination for apps that entreatment to younger users—ameliorate personal productivity and save the world while doing information technology. We also interviewed the two African founders of Kaydabi app, who accept similar ambitions.
This is the best motivation for us to build not bad apps, help people live a amend life and conserve our environment at the aforementioned time. Nosotros have as well received a lot of positive feedback and reviews from our users regarding how Forest helped them vanquish their procrastination, get ameliorate grades, and fifty-fifty helped them with their depression or ADHD.

When did you "become pro" and set up the visitor Seekrtech?
Afterward graduation, we continued to develop Forest and brand it better, and started our own company, Seekrtech, with half dozen members in our team.

After Woods, for daytime productivity, y'all moved to sleep tech. Can you explain how SleepTown works?
SleepTown is an app designed to build salubrious slumber habits. You lot set sleep goals, then commit to going to bed on time, and waking upwards at the right fourth dimension (nosotros provide alerts and alarms to aid you do this). While you slumber, virtual buildings are constructed within the app on your phone, creating your very ain SleepTown—a visual representation of your success. If you reach your goal consistently, you'll see rare buildings appear in your SleepTown. As a deterrent, you promise not to use your phone in the intervening hours. Because, if you do, the buildings will exist destroyed. In fact, you have to destroy them—just like, within Wood, where you lot take to kill the trees—in gild to use your phone.

What's next for you in terms of app development?
SleepTown 2.0 only went live with some new key features, including the functionality where users can arrange their buildings and blocks, every bit well every bit add decorations to their towns. Adjacent up? We volition keep creating more apps which help people seek for a better lifestyle.

Cheers for chatting in email. I'grand off to ready the alarm on SleepTown and see if I get through the night without destroying any virtual buildings.
Slumber well!

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So how did I do?

Setup was uncomplicated. I ready my sleep goal (10 p.m.) and wake-up fourth dimension (7 a.m.) as I really needed a dainty nine-60 minutes stretch. A reminder went off 15 minutes before it was fourth dimension to turn in, at which point I did a very quick email inbox scan before hitting the hay.

Then I left my phone on the app, and set permissions and then it could override anything else and proceed interruptions at bay. My SleepTown get-go screen had a few copse but no buildings. However, if I slept through the night, without using my phone, my start edifice would exist under construction when I got upwards.

Then, and I'yard embarrassed to admit this, I woke upward several times, and my first thought was to check the telephone. Luckily, I'd put it in some other room with a sign on information technology saying "don't you dare!" and then I left it lone.

I slept, more often than not fitfully, until morning, waking upwards naturally at half dozen:30 a.m. When I put the kettle on to make tea, I got the gentle morning welcome from SleepTown at 15 minutes to 7 a.m. Once I clicked the "wake up" button, I knew it was safe to use the phone once more, and I could see the virtual cranes constructing my first building, in the center of my very ain SleepTown.

When I went to cheque the app again, a few moments afterward, there was my kickoff building. But it was tucked behind an upsell message. I have no complaints; this is a free, ad-supported app, after all. With a 99-cent upgrade, I'd get virtual coins to redeem for buildings of my architectural choice, advantage tickets, daily coins, and deject backup. I chose not to upgrade, though, mainly because I'm not the rewards-and-coins sort of a person. But I know many people younger than me who are motivated past such fine things.

In fact, I ultimately decided to uninstall the app because I downsized to a ZTE but-smart-enough phone and am very disciplined about my app storage. I accept just a few essential apps: Moovit, Contacts+, Google Physician, and Uber (at present that it's reshuffled its management). But I did like SleepTown very much. Information technology cutting through the denial that I'm not buzzed past the dopamine rush of digital interaction. If I need virtual help again in the future, construction will brainstorm in SleepTown once once again.

SleepTown is bachelor to download on the App Store and Google Play.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/18700/put-down-your-phone-or-this-app-will-destroy-virtual-towns

Posted by: taylorteforning1957.blogspot.com

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