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What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

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31–40 of 62 posts

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#31
Has anyone tried changing their computer display to grayscale as well? I tried it for a bit but found that code syntax lacks color. Also graphics in papers all of a sudden are infinitely less informative (elucidating blue from red is really hard in grayscale)

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#32
post #20

On one hand, configuring my phone to grayscale is to me a very intriguing "lifehack". But for better or worse, my phone is also my primary camera, and I tend to think that setting it to grayscale would impair my ability to take photos.

Yet the most atmospheric professional photos are often monochrome.

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I thought about doing this...but then I realized I've already cut back the behaviors this is trying to control, or never adopted them in the first place (I was a late smartphone adopter and have had most notifications disabled for as long as I've had one). This grayscale challenge seems more to help phone addicts break their habit, but seem to do much if you aren't one and/or don't use social media apps. Don't…

on iOS you can make it so when you triple click the home button (or the side button on the X) you can toggle color filters

I have a Pixel and when I tried it I had to dig into the developer settings. Phone addiction isn't a big problem for me so only a more polished solution would make sense.

I'd really like something like the pre-existing app-specific settings like Android has for notifications and permissions.

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#34
post #22

On ios, you can set the accessibility shortcut to enable/disable greyscale quickly. Useful for when you need colour. Settings --> general --> accessiblity --> scroll to accessibility shortcut at bototm --> choose colour filters Enabling greyscale itself is in the display accomodations --> colour filters section of accessibility Once enable, just triple tap home to turn greyscale on/off At least some android systems h…

Its possible that its better to leave the option more inaccessible to further incentivize yourself from reverting back to color mode. Maybe those few extra steps of converting back to color will stop you from doing so

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#35
I found this challenge actually harmed my productivity - I wound up reading more reddit comments and playing less little puzzle games (think Flow Free, not Clash of Clans). The little puzzle games were relaxing and I could pay attention to music or a podcast while playing them. Reddit comment threads are often political and angry and reading text draws my focus entirely - leaving me feeling mad about things I really have no control over and which actually have fairly little impact on me. Uninstalled the reddit app when I realized it had this influence for me at least.

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#36
In design class we were taught light text on dark backgrounds are easier on the eyes for light emitting mediums. A nice side-effect of forcing such themes on browsers and Windows is that it cut out colorful distractions.

Sadly these themes and style overrides often make sites unusable.

Edit: typo fix

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#37
Interesting, I've been using my phone in grayscale only mode for a couple of years mostly for battery life and cause it doesn't really matter when all I use it for us reading and writing. But when I try to use it for something else I have to disable the grayscale, which is annoying, so I guess I've been unknowingly curbing my usage by doing this...

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#38
post #26

I've been on this for a few weeks now and has made a huge difference in compulsively checking email and twitter. Pro tip: add it to the triple home button click (Settings>General>Accessibility>Accessibility Shortcut (all the way at the bottom)>Select 'Color Filters') for easy switching for color/grayscale.

It's weird, I have "invert colors" but not any other options. I'm on Marshmallow (samsung s5)

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#39

Has anyone tried changing their computer display to grayscale as well? I tried it for a bit but found that code syntax lacks color. Also graphics in papers all of a sudden are infinitely less informative (elucidating blue from red is really hard in grayscale)

Indeed, there is a small movement in the development/programming community that advocate this :)

https://dev.to/huytd/turning-off-the-syntax-highlighter-8af

http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/syntaxhighlighting/

https://kyleisom.net/blog/2012/10/17/syntax-off/

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang-nuts/hJHCAaiL0s...

https://www.robertmelton.com/project/syntax-highlighting-off...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12886067

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/disable-syntax-highlig...

https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/8751/how-to-completel...

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#40

> I asked myself how many people already see the whole world like this by default. I guess about 8 percent of men are colorblind (women are much less likely to be colorblind) and I was thinking about what that might be like. For the record, the most common type of colorblindness is red/green. So it's not like 1/10 men can't see any color and "see the whole world like this".

I know that my phone has a "low power mode" which turns everything greyscale. Many phones have a "low-light reading mode" as well that turns warmer colors. I wonder how difficult it might be to have color blind mode for specific types of blindness? Might be interesting to UX designers
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