Intentor Android App

1. Introduction

• App Name: Intentor

• Purpose: The Intentor app was developed to conduct a human-computer interaction study focused on understanding social media usage patterns. The app provides two prominent features.

  1. App overlay Intervention alerts: This feature provides an alert to the user whenever a user tries to access any social media app. The alert will pop up over the opened social media app (overlay pop-up), which will provide 4 options to the user.

     1. Exit the Social media app now,

     2. Use the social media app for 10 minutes, and remind me again after that.

     3. Mute this type of alert on this social media app for the next 2 hours, and 

     4. Take Challenge, which will redirect users to the Intentor Android app to set goals like “2 hours of No Instagram use” and “Limiting WhatsApp usage to 1 hour for the day”

  2. Challenges: This is a goal-setting feature same as described above. 

This user study will expect to enroll 50-200 users who will use the Intentor app for 2  weeks. We intend that the app will create a conscious use of social media apps and will be able to help the user better understand their usage patterns and control their social media usage. Based on their usage patterns and controlled usage.

2. Data Collection

• • Types of Data Collected: The Intentor gets the logged data of app activity of users, such as foreground and background events, along with timestamps of social media apps provided by UsageStats and UsageEvents APIs provided by Android. Also includes information on time spent on a social media app, total time spent on the phone, unlock count, app visit counts, number of interventions received by the user on social media apps, number of Intentor interventions respected/declined/postponed, number of goal-setting challenge user has taken/completed/ failed. (Apart from this, no other form of data will be collected by the Intentor app.) 

  • Collection Method: Data is collected using the Retrofit library to make GET POST requests to the Django server hosted on a cloud machine. The Android APIs UsageStats and UsageEvents are used to parse and send the data in JSON format to a Django server hosted on a secure cloud machine. 

  • Purpose of Data Collection: Data is used purely for academic research purposes to study user interaction with social media apps and to gain insights into usage patterns. Entire data is collected anonymously. 

3. Data Usage

• • How Data is Used: Data is used purely for academic research purposes to study user interaction with social media apps and to gain insights into usage patterns. We will, at any cost, not reveal the identity of our participants to the public. The data will also not be published; only the conclusions will be published. The study results will be written in reports or publications only in aggregate and anonymous form without disclosing any identifying information of any participant. 

  • Third-Party Access: Data collected will not be made available to any third party or any public domain. All the conclusions and results generated will be, if published, published anonymously without revealing individuals' identities and in an aggregated form.  

4. Third-Party Services

• Purpose: Our app uses Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to send notifications to users. These notifications include reminders about the number of days the user has been using the app, and it also alerts the users when new features become available for them to use.

• Data Handling: FCM uses the device's unique identifier to deliver notifications. No personal information is transmitted through FCM.

5. Children’s Privacy

The app is not intended for children under a certain age of 18.

6. Permissions Overview

• • android. permission.INTERNET

• Allows the app to access the internet. Essential for any network-related operations, including communicating with servers, APIs, or other services.

  • android.permission.SCHEDULE_EXACT_ALARM & android.permission.USE_EXACT_ALARM

• These permissions allow the app to schedule exact alarms, which are necessary for precise timing operations, like 

  • • Every day at 12 AM midnight, the challenges taken for the day are completed and have to be reset for the next day. 

    • We are taking periodic backups of data generated every three hours so the alarm manager will trigger at intervals of 3 hours and the POST request will be made to the server. 

  • android.permission.WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE

• Grants the app permission to write data to external storage. This might be used for saving files, logs, or other necessary data that needs to be retained outside the app's local storage.

  • com.google.android.c2dm.permission.RECEIVE

• This permission is related to Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM). It allows the app to receive messages from the cloud.

  • android.permission.PACKAGE_USAGE_STATS

• This permission allows the app to access usage statistics logs generated by Android, which is central to our app’s functionality in tracking social media usage.

  • android.permission.POST_NOTIFICATIONS

• Allows the app to post notifications to the user. This is used for daily reminders and feature availability notifications and it also helps to display the time usage of the phone to the user.

  • android.permission.SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW

• Grants permission to display overlay windows on top of other apps. This is used to show the overlay pop-ups whenever the user has accessed any social media app.

  • android.permission.FOREGROUND_SERVICE

• Allows the app to run foreground services, which are services that the user is actively aware of, typically due to a persistent notification.

  • android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED

• This permission allows the app to receive a broadcast that is sent after the system finishes booting. It’s useful for starting services or scheduling tasks that need to run after a reboot. We used this to start the monitoring service of app launches.

  • android.permission.WAKE_LOCK

• Allows the app to prevent the device from going to sleep, which can be essential during long-running tasks.

  • android.permission.VIBRATE

• Grants permission to access the device's vibrator, which is used for notifying the user when their 10 minutes of usage is about to expire.

  • android.permission.GET_TASKS

• Allows the app to retrieve information about the current or recently running tasks. This might be used for managing app processes or activities.