This is a challenging question, especially for those of us whose job might include a sense of guilt around designing more anxiety-generating products and services. Print and packaging designers have the environment to ponder over. Digital designers may unconsciously worry about our inner environment and how they might be affecting people’s mental health. With problems like ADHD, acute anxiety disorder, addiction and an ever-increasing separation from our natural world, these concerns are real.

We have a constant stream of devices and “clutter” competing for our attention. Even if you vow never again to own a phone or computer, you’ll find it hard to avoid the television which ironically, is used in many public places to fill the empty/quiet space so desperately needed in our busy and information-saturated lives. Bars, restaurants, health clubs, doctor’s offices, gas pumps…even government buildings now have the TV turned on, eliminating any “quiet time” we may encounter as we wait for our number to be called. In the past, these distractions were welcomed. Now with so much already talking to us, they’ve become a nuisance—a distraction we find almost impossible to ignore.

In short, our lives are filled with clutter and there seems to be no escape.

Disconnecting is good for us. It makes us more settled, allows us to evaluate our situation more clearly and lets creative ideas and solutions rise to the surface. Depending on what we’re doing while we’re disconnected (going for a walk, painting, playing with the dog, etc.), it can also help remove us from the world of thoughts, which is actually quite refreshing considering the amount of time we spend communicating and reading news, email, blogs, tweets, etc.

It takes courage to disconnect and break from the clutter of media and technology. Last year, I went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat which I enjoyed doing, in part, to disconnect. Unlike previous experiences, this time I had problems settling into the profound silence one finds in such a place. As a remedy, a teacher suggested I go to my car and check my email! He recognized the difficulty of disconnecting and his prescription was to give me a little dose of modern life so I could relax again. Just one more hit, man!

Seeking solitude is becoming more and more important in today’s always-on world. But maybe we should go to the source of the problem and ask “If so many of us are connected all the time—whether it be email, social media, print media, phone, radio, TV or all of the above—why is it that we are?” After all, what really are the rewards to being connected all the time? Does it make us any happier?

It reminds me of the old saying, “No one on their deathbed ever said ‘I wish I’d spent more time at the office.’” Maybe it should be revised for a 21st century audience to be, “No one on their deathbed ever said ‘I wish I’d posted more tweets.’”

Dr. Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at the University of Arizona showed that people who have more substantive, deep conversations throughout the day are happier than those who spend more time engaging in small talk (i.e. social media). And in an article for the Harvard Business Review, Umair Haque shares a hypothesis. He proposes that “despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn’t connecting us as much as we think it is. It’s largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.” Might technology and social media not do what they—seemingly—promise to do?

What they seem to do is help fulfill our innate desire to connect with others. Like food, water, sex and shelter, we have a need to be with each other. We’re social animals (some more than others). But with the advent of social media like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, we’ve put ourselves into social over-drive. Is it possible that new media is pushing our biological buttons just like candy pushes our buttons for the taste of salt and sugar, pornography for sex and McMansions for our desire to have a large roof over our heads? Has man-made invention once again made us into a lab rat?

Our clutter and connection to media and technology will only increase as advertising finds its way into new nooks and crannies and as one device talks to another device, which talks to all your “friend’s” devices, and so on… Everything is talking to us. It’s like the profound and memorable opening to the movie Contact, where we’re traveling into out space away from Planet Earth. As we move farther away from Earth, all the human-generated radio and TV broadcast noise slowly diminishes.

Certainly, the majority of technology and media aren’t what we would consider “harmful”. I don’t want to bore anyone counting the ways technology and media have benefited us. But when singularly relied on for authentic social interaction and re-creation, technology and media can quickly take on a very shallow and trivial role, sending us into dis-ease. They have the potential to clutter-up our lives with unnecessary anxiety, “priorities” and information tid-bits. Through repeated use, they can become what feels like a security blanket. They’re experts at creating value where there wasn’t any before.

In truth, we are still learning how to live with a lot of new technology—Facebook, Twitter, location-based apps, smart phones… It’s still too early to say whether or not these technologies are fads or here to stay. One thing is for sure, we have an exponentially larger amount of “clutter” in our lives than people just 15 years ago, ever had. How we manage it is the responsibility of each of us.

We need to evaluate what adds real value to our daily lives and throw away the rest. My own practice includes giving away books that are collecting dust, canceling magazine subscriptions, deleting RSS feeds that no longer interest me, making it a rule to follow only a few on Twitter and cutting out anything else I consider of little value. As much as I enjoy interacting and working with technology and media, I know that in order to allow other things in life, I must make some room first.

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The Human-Tech Experiment

The Internet began to take off several years earlier with the introduction of Mosaic, the first Web browser with mass appeal. In 1994, the same founders formed a new company and released Netscape Navigator. Only a year later, Microsoft launched the first version of Internet Explorer and soon everyone was moving to the Web.

Flash forward to this century:

• January 2007, Apple announces the iPhone

• In June of the same year at WWDC 2007, Apple announces it will support third-party “web applications”

• In October, an open letter from Steve Jobs announces a software development kit (SDK) will be available to third-party developers

• November 2007, Google unveils the Android platform

• July 2008, Apple’s App Store officially opens with downloads topping 1.5 billion in first year
• April 2009, Blackberry App World launched

• June 2009, Apple vice president Phil Schiller announces there are 50,000 applications available in the App Store

• June 2009, Palm launches the Pre

• July 2009, Motorola, Huawei, Archos, Lenovo and HTC have already built or have confirmed plans to release a phone with Google’s Android platform

• July 2009, non-tech companies Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Burger King , Coca-Cola, Nike, Adidas, Lacoste, D&G, Dior, BMW, Ferrari, Whole Foods, Kraft, and AAA all have iPhone applications

What’s going on? For some business owners, this might send shivers down their back. Is this for real? You bet it is, and you won’t want to be the last to know for the same reason you didn’t want to be the last to know about the Internet. Movement to mobile will be fast and as always, it’s the first to cross the finish line that counts, not the second.

Just as quickly as we turned into a culture with a computer in every home, we’re turning into a culture with one in every pocket. Not only are people walking around with little computers attached to their bodies, they are connected to them in a myriad of ways via online social networking, maps, news, games, video, music and chat.

This July at the VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference, the BBC reported that the big prediction is that the mobile applications market will be as big as the Internet in 2020. It’s no surprise that they are also predicting the market will grow to 100,000 apps by the end of 2009. Ilja Laurs, CEO of GetJar commented, “The full blossom will come in ten years and mobile apps will become as popular as websites are today with consumers.”

Here are some reasons why you’ll want a mobile app for your business sooner rather than later:

If you’re not on the web already, then you’re dead. The same will hold true for mobile.

Just as it’s a requirement for most businesses to have a web presence, it will soon be one to have a mobile presence. For many businesses having no web presence would be death and holds true to the saying “out of site, out of mind” when it comes to staying connected with your customers. Not providing online content to your customers is a dead-end for them and with the price of advertising, no business can afford to throw away customer-generated interest. Mobile is no exception. It’s another extension to your customers. It’s 1999 all over again and you’re going to need a good mobile presence.

Mobile apps are an extension of your company’s brand

It’s no accident that brick and mortar companies like Taco Bell, Lacoste and Whole Foods have mobile apps. Mobile apps are another “touchpoint” for their brand where they can interact with their audience. Marty Neumeier in his book Zag writes, “Traditional advertising is in a death spiral”…”But the root causes for the death spiral are twofold: 1) People don’t like one-way conversations, and 2) People don’t trust advertising.”

So how do you extend your brand and not use advertising? One idea is to build a utility that your customers find useful…like a mobile app.

Sherwin-Williams designed ColorSnap for the iPhone to help their customers match colors they like with Sherwin-Williams paint color. Pizza Hut launched their iPhone app that lets their customers order their favorite pepperoni pizza in seconds. Pizza Hut promotes their app with words like “easy”, “fast” and “fun”. In short, they’re making it easy for their customers, and promoting their brand in a way that doesn’t come off as being intrusive or forceful. Best of all, their icon gets to live on the customer’s mobile device helping to establish a connection between Pizza Hut and their customers.

You will want to be connected to your customers wherever they go

Companies have found a multitude of ways to stay connected with their customers via TV, billboards, print ads, sponsorships, etc. Unfortunately for them, these mediums take on a static relationship with their customers when compared with mobile. Unless you have a logo tattooed to your body (I hope not), no medium goes everywhere your customer goes like a branded mobile application does.

Users don’t like to use their mobile web browser

Before Apple opened its App Store there was a lot of media coverage around increasing statistics showing the popularity of mobile internet usage.

That was then and this is now.

While having a web site optimized for mobile browsers is a good idea, it’s no longer a sufficient means of connecting with your mobile customers. Why? Because the experience doesn’t fit the medium. It’s slow and cumbersome and was originally designed for a PC experience, not your phone. For mobile users, speed is everything. Using a phone’s web browser is akin to using a knife instead of a Cuisenart to chop vegetables. One is automatic, one is not.

To use a browser on a mobile device the user opens it to a blank screen, types a long URL with their thumbs, zooms-in to be able to read the content and laboriously navigates via several zooms, pinches, swipes and taps. Basically, it’s a lot of work. Even optimized sites still require the user to type a URL and experience what is typically, a very generic, long and linear interface. In both scenarios, there’s also the frustration of waiting for long pages and big images to load. Why not make it easy for the customer to get the information they need within a few seconds?

When I want to read the New York Times I don’t go to their web site (which on my iPhone is little bit like reading a newspaper with a magnifying glass), I use my NYT app. When I want to track packages, I use an app for that. When I want to know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, I use an app for that… The point is the mobile web browser is a tool of last resort. It’s a manual experience versus the “automatic” experience of apps.
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Of course moving your brand and/or company to the web 15 years ago wasn’t easy, and neither will moving it to mobile now. The good news is that some of the most successful apps are light in content and need only a few screens. Apps are typically widget-like and don’t require outsourcing half of India to get the job done.

The bad news is that there are now several platforms to design and build for, and each one uses their own programming style, visual language and screen dimensions (for more about this topic and why “one size doesn’t fit all”, please view my previous blog post: 31 Flavors – Designing for iPhone, Android and Blackberry Platforms). While the iPhone seems to be leading the pack in regard to app usage, you cannot ignore Blackberry’s user base or the number of “Android phones” in the works.

The miniature size of apps compared to desktop applications and web sites has its advantage. A disadvantage is that users quickly lose interest. That’s why it’s important to continue to keep users and customers engaged via dynamic content, updates and new apps.

Another point to keep in mind is that despite an app’s limited number of screens, the time and cost it takes to launch a successful app isn’t cheap and takes several weeks. There are still, only a handful of good mobile app designers and developers out there. The ones that do exist are still learning on the job because the technology is still new and platform updates are frequent. In addition, the development might require two engineers if any animation outside of the SDK is used. An app, while deceptively small in size, can be extremely feature rich and challenge both designers and technologists to maintain a user experience that is efficient and at the same time, meaningful for the customer.
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If you’re shopping for an app team to help you, this is what you should look for:

Multidisciplinary team

While some single-person development teams have been successful building and launching their own apps, with over 50,000 apps in Apple’s App Store alone, the gold rush is over and it’s not recommended that you try to hire one person to do everything. It takes several people to launch a successful app including, in most cases, an interactive designer, a visual designer, an engineer and a project manager.

An understanding of the medium

Designing for the iPhone or Android platform is not the same as designing a web site. The designers should have intimate knowledge of the device or platform with a thorough understanding of its native elements and best practices. User interfaces should be designed to be intuitive and follow platform standards that the device’s users are accustomed to. For example, iPhone apps don’t use drop-downs. A good iPhone app designer will be able to provide an immediate solution for such a problem.

Documentation

Make sure the team has an iterative design process that includes documentation of user flows and screen details (i.e. wireframes). Paper is cheap. Make sure the team has worked out most of the design problems on paper before any coding begins. Apple’s UI Evangelist, Eric Hope recommends that at least ½ of an iPhone project’s time be spent on design.

Lastly, keep in mind that mobile apps are still a new medium, mobile platform updates are frequent and the rules of the game and its players are constantly changing.

In the latest controversy over the suppression of results from a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about the dangers of talking on a cell phone while driving, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd comments, “Americans are so addicted to techno-surfing that they’ve gotten hubristic about how many machines they can juggle simultaneously.” She explains how a colleague of hers recently filed a story from his laptop while driving on the highway.

According to the study taken years ago, there are estimates that drivers talking on their cell phones caused 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents in 2002. As cell phone adoption increases, we can only expect to see those numbers increase. And this isn’t just about talking without a headset. According to another article, “The researchers had rightly proposed a warning to state governors about the initial finding that laws mandating the use of hands-free devices did not solve the problem. The conversation is the distraction.”

Technology, of course, is just a tool and like any tool it can be used for better or for worse. There’s no need for a discourse on the marvels of technology. We’re all keenly reminded each time we make a trip to the doctor, fly accross the country, or have a video chat with a friend on the other side of the globe. Technology generally, makes our lives easier and less of a burden. But we seem to be entering new territory with the likes of social networking applications and our continuous feedback systems. How much is too much? What’s our threshold?

Our weakness is not so much the use of technology, but our human predisposition to addiction. We are “desire-lings” as a friend of mine likes to say. Dowd concludes her article by writing, “ Auto companies are busy creating new crack hits for our self-destructive cravings. Ford is developing a system that would let drivers use phones and music players and surf the Internet with voice commands and audible responses. Sounds like a computerized death machine. But, as our dealers know, we’ll never disconnect.”

I’m sorry to say I’m battling my own addiction with “Ego” (no, not that one), an iPhone app that lets you monitor your web site’s analytics, Mint account, RSS subscribers and Twitter followers all in one “let’s-make it-simple” screen. Here are some of the endorsements from their website:

“If you manage a web site and are a statistic junkie, this app will be a fantastic investment.”

“Ego is crack cocaine for the average statistics junkie.”

Since when did apps become synonymous with crack cocaine? I have to admit, it’s extremely addictive to sneak in a glance every now and then…maybe just twice a day…ok, several times a day. The mind chatter usually goes something like “I wonder how many visitors I’ve had today” or “Hmmm, my Twitter followers count is lower than yesterday. Could it be me my posts?”

Many of my colleagues–long-time tech veterans–are amazed by the popularity of Twitter. It’s just a fad, right? I mean, who cares what you just ate for lunch. Apparently, a lot of people. There’s even a Twitterholic site that lists the top 100 users with the most followers. As of July 2009, Britney Spears has 2,519,275 followers and her last tweet was: “HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRETT!!!!! XOXO”. Go figure.

The social pressure from joining social networks like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace can be overwhelming. All of a sudden you find yourself taking on a virtual life that must be tended to OR ELSE. It’s like having another you in some parallel universe. God forbid you forget to feed it, bathe it and take care of its every need.

Despair.com has a diagram it uses on one of its t-shirts that shines some light on our obsessive online social habits. It’s no surprise that unhealthy mental states such as narcissism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD or ADD) and stalking are terms used to sarcastically describe Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and TweetStalk–yes, TweetStalk! I cringe at the thought of my 7 year old daughter entering the social networks realm.

And, of course, there’s more. I’m not an authority on the habits of teenagers these days, but clearly texting is still something they do often. Do they really do “sexting”?

I have a neighbor who tells me he answers text message while driving his Harley-Davidson on the freeway! Apparently he answers using a quick-text picker that inserts a pre-populated response. Still, I think, “Can’t he just answer them later?”…”when he’s not driving on the freeway with one hand at 70 mph?”

And if phone calls, email, voicemail, tweets and text messages are not enough to make you swerve into a ditch, with the release of iPhone 3.0 there are now iPhone instant messenger apps that will let you receive all your collective chat accounts via “push notifications” or alerts to your phone. Imagine, always being “available” to your chatting friends.

How many more information feeds will we use via our phones, at our desk, in the car, at home? What about while we’re sleeping?

The Zeo Sleep Monitor will monitor your sleep behavior for you. According to their web site, the Zeo “works seamlessly with your personal computer to offer you another window into the world of your sleep.” Great, another addiction for my weak reptilian brain.

As we already know, technology seems to be wonderful for lighting up the pleasure centers in our brains. Unlike our primitive ancestors, we can get a fix anytime, anywhere. Music, video, comedy, games, sexual arousel…

Marc Andressen, entrepreneur and multi-millionaire best known as founder of Netscape Communications Corporation, is launching a $300 million venture capital fund and apparently, has strong preferences for backing companies whose products “make your brain secrete dopamine”.

Josh Quittner reports in his TIME blog post: “The neurotransmitter is kind of a drug of anticipation—we secrete it when thinking about food and sex. A few months ago, I was talking to Andreessen and he told me, half jokingly, that “I’m only investing in dopamine companies.” He’d been spending some time looking into it and determined that other things stimulate its production as well. Blackberries and iPhones for instance. You know how, when you’re at a dinner table and some nitz pulls out his iPhone and starts checking his email? And how you and everyone else reflexively reaches for theirs? That, my friends, is a dopamine response, and if you pay attention, you’ll start noticing all kinds of things that spur it.”

Ugh. Stop! We’re not a bunch of caged rhesus monkeys waiting for a pellet to drop!

So, where do we go from here? Will we recognize our fragility as sentient beings with soft, malleable minds? Will we recognize the long-term effects of our technological advances? Form AA groups for recovering technophiles?

Actually, technology isn’t the problem, it’s us. Are we a mature enough species to wield responsibly, tech’s awesome power and use it for the benefit of ourselves and other beings? Will we employ skillful means or will technology be our next crack cocaine? Our next DUI? Technology was supposed to make our lives easier and ease the burden of being human. Will we have the good sense to know when to leave it parked in the garage?  The rats won’t tell.