ANTiDISTRACTION Is a Shunning Smartphone Holder
This docking station is aimed at reducing cellular distraction during periods of intense focus.
Many, perhaps even most, of us spend lots and lots of time on our phones. Sure, they are extremely useful, but they can also be quite distracting. For that matter, what if your phones didn't like this sort of attention? If they could, they might turn away at the sight of a human hand.
Now you don’t have to imagine this kind of shunning behavior out of your smartphone, as the “ANTiDISTRACTION” dock senses every time someone reaches towards it and turns the phone away in response. The device, it would seem, “is not interested in [your] hedonistic pursuits.”
Everything controlled by an Arduino Uno, which detects approaching fingers via an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor. Under the dock, a small 28BYJ-48 stepper driven by a ULN2003A board rotates the phone turntable for shunning, with power provided by a USB power bank. The physical design is pleasingly understated, made out of white plexiglass on a laser cutter, and was prototyped in Baltic birch.
The ANTiDISTRACTION was created by Guershom Kitsa, Yena Lee, John Shen, and Nicole Zsoter, as an assignment for a physical computing class at the University of Toronto. While it was meant to be a useless machine assignment, one could imagine such a concept being implemented to help facilitate a distraction-free environment. Check it out in the videos below!