Designing Scalable Syntaxes for Interface-Modifying Digital Self-Control Tool Interventions

Abstract

How can interface-modifying digital self-control tools “scale up” so that they can become widely used, adaptable, and reliable systems in a user's digital lifestyle? This paper is motivated by ad blockers and password managers, two types of popular user interface modification tools (outside of the digital self-control area) which provide reliable user experiences among a large scale of websites. We apply a framework based on the syntaxes of ad blockers and password managers to the digital self-control area, and discuss the current state of the digital wellbeing field in terms of progress towards scalable interface modifications. We also propose benefits and potential limitations of interface-modifying syntaxes for digital self-control tool interventions.