Stop Your Smartphone Addiction With Siempo’s New App
A new app called Siempo can stop your addiction to your smartphone. This app will un-addict you from your smartphone and its lots of attention stealing apps. The startup, which launched a few weeks ago on Google, actually started as a hardware company.
From Hardware Startup To Software
How did Siempo started? Andreas Gala and Jorge Selva, the original co-founders, began developing a minimalist feature phone device called Minium in 2015. This is their response in today’s always-on culture. But hardware designing from scratch is hard, so they shifted to making a mindful smartphone called Siempo. They used existing handsets from China.
The following year, Siempo brought on Mayank Saxena (CTO), who previously ran data storage engineering apps at Net App. And Andrew Dunn (now CEO), who was previousle number sixteen employee at Flexport.
“I struggled with smartphone and social media addiction as a teenager. I had been working on a wearable to help people balance their relationship with tech”, explains Dunn. And according to him, Mayank has grown increasingly concerned about raising balanced children in the digital age, even before he joined Flexport.
But the company did not reach its goal when it tried raising funds on Kickstarter in2017. What the team underestimated was how difficult it is to convince people to switch smartphones. People will be be asked to try a whole new type of mobile experience, and not just asking them to buy new hardware.
How Does Siempo Work
Siempo reverses some of the persuasive, psychological addictive techniques that have been built in your phone software and mobile apps by developers. These developers specifically designed their apps to increase our engagement, without fully understanding the consequences of their action.
The world is now starting to realize these mistakes. These include the people who built the system in the first place.
Once installed, Siempo makes your homescreen a calmer interface. It also leverages a number of design techniques to distance you from your distractions, including by unbranding app icons and turning them to greyscale.
The launcher also organizes apps where the distracting apps are further away on the third page. The app has now been endorsed by the Center for Humane Technology as an example of humane design.
