Many smartphone users engage in compulsive and habitual phone checking which they find frustrating, yet our understanding of how this phenomenon is experienced is limited. We conducted a semi-structured interview, a think-aloud phone use demonstration, and a sketching exercise with 39 smart phone users (ages 14–64) to probe their experiences with compulsive phone checking. Their insights revealed a small taxonomy of common triggers that lead up to instances of compulsive phone use and a second set that end compulsive phone use sessions. Though participants expressed frustration with their lack of self-control, they also reported that the activities they engage in during these sessions can be meaningful, which they defined as transcending the current instance of use. Participants said they periodically refect on their compulsive use and delete apps that drive compulsive checking without providing sufficient meaning. We use these findings to create a descriptive model of the cycle of compulsive checking, and we call on designers to craft experiences that meet users’ definition of meaningfulness rather than creating lock-out mechanisms to help them police their own use.

STUDIO is a peer mentoring program that focuses on connecting University of Washington (UW) undergraduate student mentors with low income, immigrant and refugee youth through Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics( STEM). The program is a partnership with the Neighborhood House community center in the High Point Neighborhood of West Seattle. Neighborhood House provides the facilities and is the gathering place for UW mentors and youth mentees on a weekly basis. As STUDIO is offered as an undergraduate course (EDUC 421), the mentors visit Neighborhood House once a week and then attend a weekly seminar class on campus as well. The program began as a research study that focuses on promoting youth interest in STEM. However, over the past few years it has made progress in undergraduate STEM learning research as well. As a lead mentor within the STUDIO program, I have an opportunity to participate in research aspect as well as cultivate mentorship with youth, and supporting other mentors. In this study, I explore how relationships between youth and mentors develop in STUDIO. I am doing this through analysis of documentation of STEM and non-STEM activities, written reflections of mentors and interviews. They are analyzed for types of relationships that mentors develop through this program as well as themes and patterns of development. The goal is to better understand how a mentorship program that focuses on bridging the gap of educational inequity for youth lends possibility for undergraduate learning through relationships building.