Researchers Seek Healthy Checks and Balances in How Products Are Designed
In this School of Medicine Scope blog post, SHP’s Sara Singer notes that as technology encourages 24-7 digital connectivity, there's a coinciding rise in unhealthy behaviors: poor sleep, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, less outdoor time and social isolation.
As you read this, likely on a digital device, you're interacting with the product environment, the collection of products and services consumers choose to use or not use on a day-to-day basis. Over the last few decades, technology has drastically transformed the product environment and, subsequently, how we live our lives. Artificial intelligence is only throwing gasoline on that fire.
Nowadays, people spend hours interacting with technology, a giant sector of the product environment. The average person spends about four hours on their smartphone, a spike in use attributable to the endless scrolling opportunities on social media apps. Those apps create easy solutions to garden-variety chores, from ordering food, to hailing a ride, to getting goods and groceries delivered.
With such convenience at our fingertips comes a messy health conundrum, says Sara Singer, PhD, a professor of health policy and medicine who studies the human effects of the product environment. As technology encourages 24-7 digital connectivity, there's a coinciding rise in unhealthy behaviors: poor sleep, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, less outdoor time and social isolation. The problem is, there's no good way to measure those connections; worse yet, there's no real mechanism to combat the unhealthy habits. Singer hopes to change that.
