Application Critique - Forest

Today, I will be reviewing Forest, a productivity application to help users keep their smartphones aside and focus on their work.

The group presented quite a few good and bad points about the application which I found interesting and relevant. They mentioned that the application offers a clean and simple User Interface, with the minimum functionality required to fulfil the intended purpose of the application. I agree that the mere simplicity in the design of the application is one of the key reasons for its success as a productivity application. If the User Interface had been more complex or had additional features, users would be distracted in exploring these additional features, defeating the original purpose of the application.

The group also mentioned that gamification techniques are used to reward users with coins. The coins can then be used to plant a diverse variety of virtual trees in their virtual forest. I feel that this gamification technique is important to retain users to continue using the application.

The group suggested adding a reminder feature which encourages users to use the application through personalized notifications with messages such as “1 Hour to break the last week record.. Use Forest now?” I feel that this is a really useful feature which can be added to the application, as it reminds users to use the application and uses friendly competition to motivate users to improve their productivity further.

I feel that Forest is a good productivity application for users who are addicted to their smartphones and waste hours daily scrolling through social media feeds. I also found the idea of using virtual coins on the application to plant a real tree in the world very noble. I was personally impressed that Forest has already planted 118,034 trees, and I believe that any such positive step taken has a big impact on our environment and makes our world a better place to live in.


However, I don’t think I will use Forest personally as I feel that it is important for us to inculcate good time management skills on our own without having to depend on yet another application to do it for us. Moreover, since most people own more than 1 device, they may continue to browse through social media on their laptops or other devices while Forest is running on their smartphones. People can choose to ignore, turn off or uninstall such productivity applications. Ultimately, the success of Forest depends on how far users themselves are able to and willing to go to cure their smartphone addiction and increase their concentration on their work.

Comments

  1. Hi, yes I agree the success of this application really depends on the users mentality. However I wanted to add this idea of stopping a user from device addiction isn't actually very new and as far as I know have existed in the early 2000s. My own family have used it on me to stop me from playing games. (I no longer have game addiction anymore) I don't remember the application name already because it was many years back but I know the software was locked with a password and can be used to proxy site access and internet flow. The software doesn't remind you that it has locked them but just let the site access fail because the intention was to not let the applicant to realize it. However back then there was usually only one device which is the computer and so Apoorva made a very good point that nowadays people usually have more than one devices. A lot of social media platforms also have both web and mobile versions too. I love the UI alot though and really like the gamification idea and feel great they are actually doing more than helping user to concentrate but also actually planting a tree somewhere in the world.

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    1. Hey Daphne! Glad to know your gaming addiction was cured with the help of such a software! I think that such software which directly block internet access to certain sites are much more useful in curing addictions than Forest, which gives you greater flexibility and freedom to revert back to using the sites you are addicted to. However, some users may prefer the softer approach taken by Forest as it helps them to take small but sure steps towards curing their addiction. Moreover, some users may use Forest simply to improve their productivity for a certain period of time, like when they are studying or working, and not to cure any addiction.

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  2. Hi Apoorva,

    I agree with your point that Forest is a kind of application that depends on whether users are determined enough to use. Unlike other types of apps, say a Calendar app, which is pretty much going to be useful for everyone, Forest may not be useful (in curbing phone addiction) for people who are not determined enough. This is why I feel that before making an app like Forest, market research is very important. As developers, we have to find out if there are a significant amount of people who will make use of the app. Perhaps Forest did do that and they found out that a majority of the users are motivated to curb their phone addiction using an app, hence granting them such success in the App Store. To further add onto your takeaways from the Forest App Group presentation, I feel that given the nature of the Forest app, the freemium business model should be the way to go if they want to further push their market share and eventual revenue to greater heights. With the freemium model, not only will they attract more targetted users, I presume that they will also be able to get users who are not as willing to curb their phone addiction to try out the app, and hopefully get some of them hooked onto the concept.

    - Jane

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    1. Hey Jane! I agree with you that the freemium business model should be adopted for Forest. Many users may not want to pay for Forest without finding out if it works for them. Giving users a free trial for a few days will encourage more users to download and try the application, and maybe even more will be impressed and convert to the premium version. However, since the success of Forest largely depends on the users determination to continue using the application, collecting revenue at the download of the application itself allows Forest to monetize more as many users may succumb to their addiction after a few days of the free trial and discontinue the use of the application.

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  3. Hi Apoorva :)

    I really resonate with your point about Forest's clean and simple UI. I think that another benefit of this, aside from not having users get distracted and tempted to use other apps more, is that the onboarding process for new users is quick and they can get started with Forest almost immediately. When I was using the Chrome extension version of Forest for the first time, it took me only two clicks to get the timer started and go back to doing productive work. Very impressive design that takes into account user interactions with the system.

    I also agree with your opinion that time management skills is something that ought to be inculcated on our own. However, I think that one value proposition of Forest is the fact that technology (a mobile app) is used as an aid to breaking a habit - smartphone addiction - through incentives like planting trees (and possibly impact on our real, physical environment). So I actually feel that this is quite an innovative product in this respect and I felt inspired by the concept of using virtual incentives to help users break habits. Do you think other spin-off apps could be created to help users break other forms of (more harmful?) addictions, such as smoking or gambling?

    Cheers,
    Hui Yie

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    1. Hey Hui Yie! I think your idea of spin-off applications for breaking other forms of addictions is really good! Maybe there can be an application linked with e-cigarettes, to monitor the user's e-cigarette consumption. It can show statistics of how long it has been since the user last used their e-cigarette or have timers similar to Forest during which they cannot smoke.

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