What I learned from this document:

• The importance of curating a user experience story alongside product road mapping

• Non-goals are just as important as goals

• The emphasis PRDs have on user perspective and discovery

• FAQs are one of the most important sections and they are more team-facing questions

• Operational checklists align teams and exit criteria help set milestones

• Selling to the "why?" to your team is just as important as selling to customers (maybe more)

For Specific Feedback leave a comment on this Google Doc!

Poke

A mobile phone app to “poke” users to help decrease screen time and increase productivity by “poking” them to leave the app.

Team: Poke Team
Contributors: Connor Young (PM), Jenny Lin (Designer), Steven Son (Engineer), Leon Zhang (Analyst)
Resources: Designs [Figma]
Status: Problem Review
Last Updated: Monday, June 30, 2025

Problem Alignment

Students and workers want to work hard, yet they default to “doom scrolling” and find that they have achieved nothing by the end of their day, as they look at 5+ hours of screen time. They want to get off it, but they can’t. Apple has built-in screen time checks, but “it is just too easy to ignore.”

Why Does This Matter?

This matters because attention is the most sought-after commodity by companies. Lack of focus is difficult with so many apps fighting for your attention. Companies also lose valuable working hours because their employees are so distracted.

Supporting Evidence:

• The average person spends a whole day on their phone per week, or 70 days a year.

• Students admitted that the Apple screen time lock is easy to ignore.

• 50% of teens feel addicted to their phones.

High-Level Approach

We will create a mobile application that limits screen time on the specific applications a user wants. Once they input a desired time per day, and go over that time, the application will “poke” them and take over their screen, telling them it is time to get off. The longer they continue to stay on, the more frequent the pokes. This experience helps gamify and reduce the feeling of intrusion on important tasks.

Narrative

Amy is a fourth-year university student studying for her last final. Studying motivation is low, but she knows she needs to study and turns on Poke. As she studies, she begins to pick up her phone and scroll on TikTok. She gets poked once, ignores it, then gets poked a second time, and a third time. She immediately puts the phone down and out of sight, going back to studying. After a study break, she can see the number of times she was poked and is more motivated to study and stay off her phone.

Goals

✅ See a reduction in pokes per day for users
✅ Score average > 5 on Likert Scale for a poking system that does not feel intrusive but helpful
✅ Archive 5 applications per user to poke for
✅ Be installable and usable in < 2 minutes

Non-goals

❌ Not a desktop application because we are focusing on just social media scrolling
❌ No ads; will run outside of the application because this will feel extremely invasive

Solution Alignment

Key Features – Plan of Record

• Add application (e.g., TikTok, Instagram) to a poking list

• A timer for when the application is opened throughout the day

• Poke overlay for the application

• Shorter and shorter intervals as the user continues on the app

• User option to add a more aggressive poke (password and math problem) to get past it

Future Considerations

• A similar feature to a growing garden if they are not “poked” for an extended time

• Streaks and challenges

• Characters get stronger if not poked and weaker if poked

Key Flows

• User installs the application

• Clicks “Add app”

• Choose allowed time

• Session UI shows time left for the app and the number of pokes that day (or all time)

• Distraction attempts are blocked with a custom overlay

• Day ends, and a recap of yesterday

Key Logic

• Poke list includes YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok

• The timer resets every day and begins if on the specified app

• Once a poke appears, a 5-minute interval and divide the time by 2 for each poke

• Streak resets if more than 5 pokes in a day

Key Milestones

• 2025-07-10 – ✅ Pilot

  • Milestone: Internal team tests MVP

  • Exit Criteria: No P0 bugs in 7 days

• 2025-07-20 – 🛑 Beta

  • Milestone: 20 external testers

  • Exit Criteria: 90% complete the setup and get poked

• 2025-08-01 – 🛑 Early Access

  • Milestone: Invite-only release to productivity community

  • Exit Criteria: 10 Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey responses

• 2025-08-05 – 🛑 Market

  • Milestone: Begin marketing campaigns on social media

  • Exit Criteria: 50%+ click-through rate for the advertisements

• 2025-08-15 – 🛑 Launch

  • Milestone: Official App Store release

  • Exit Criteria: 500 active users, 35% D7 retention

Open Questions

• Should we hard turn off pokes for emergencies?

  • Would this become a default button to click?

  • What emergency would need this?

• Are soft nudges more effective than hard blocks?

FAQs

• Is this for students only? No — anyone who wants to stay productive and off their phone.

• Does it track me? No—We will store the amount of pokes locally, and that is it.

• Can I pause a session? Once per day, you can reset the timer.

• Does the application watch my screen? No, it will only track if an app is open and display a poke

• How is this different from Apple screen restrictions? We focus on repeated notifications with decreasing time intervals. Apple only does it once with an easy click away

• Is it free? If you want to add more than 5 applications, the user will need to get premium, but below 5, it is free