Kawach: Reducing Smartphone Distractions by Leveraging Tangible Skins to Disguise Smartphones as Everyday Objects

Smartphones, while designed to provide us with a variety of utilities, opportunities, and conveniences, are often distracting and can negatively impact our health. Prior research introduced various software solutions for digital wellbeing. However, these digital solutions exist alongside excessively used apps, paradoxically requiring one to use more of their smartphones to reduce its problematic usage. We propose the concept of Kawach, tangible skins for smartphones to disguise them as everyday objects. By channelizing the smartphone's capabilities into a specific functionality, we aim to reduce distraction. This work focuses primarily on work-related activities and repurposes the smartphone as an object that enhances productivity. We realize our design approach based on the benefits of TUIs, the concept of design friction, and insights from soul-body prototyping. We showcase our concept through four artifacts.