In Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation, he writes about how social media apps were designed to “use every trick in the psychologists’ toolkit to hook users as deeply as slot machines hook gamblers.” Modern apps have often been designed to engage our stress hormones (cortisol) to spur the user into action. One example is the ubiquitous red dot you see on many apps’ notification bars.
Red is the color of blood, the color of stop signs. The color evokes a sense of urgency and panic. This is quite an effective design tool, but is it good?
With PrayMore, we want users to engage with the app, but only in order to pray in worship to the Lord and to pray more for others. Tapping into users’ stress hormones is the last thing we want to do in our already hectic and lonely society. Where mainstream social media apps might emphasize large and flashy ads, we want to create a calm and peaceful experience with no distractions from prayer. We want to design a space where users are reminded of God’s goodness and grace, and are led into a time of peaceful reflection and prayer. If a red dot would encourage users to pray more often, maybe that could be a good thing. However, we always want to put a lot of thought and wisdom into how we use tools that were created by the world.
One simple way we’ve done this is through our PrayMore notification tone. Nate and JJ—both music and sound engineering enthusiasts—took the traditional “Amen” plagal cadence and converted that into what is now our PrayMore reminder tone.
Take a listen:
Please pray that as we continue to design and build an app for prayer, we would discern how to use technology for good, and not to add to the noise. Pray that we can even harness the attention-grabbing nature of technology to grab people's attention to pray to the God who rules the universe.