Brainy: a Virtual Pet Encouraging Digital Wellbeing

Nowadays, people struggle to find a balance with their smartphone use. Existing tools for digital-self control have proven ineffective in the long term due to their over-restrictive nature. In this paper, we developed Brainy, a gamified mobile application that encourage users towards healthy digital habits using a virtual brain pet that reflect the state of the user's brain concerning their digital wellbeing. Through a 10-day in-the-wild study with 17 users, we found that the app effectively enhanced users' awareness of their smartphone usage patterns and its consequences on their brains. Gamification elements, such as the daily wellbeing bar, were well-perceived by users, helping them reflect and motivating towards healthier habits thus showing promising opportunities for supporting digital wellbeing. Our findings open the way for the use of gamification elements in digital wellbeing apps to better support people.