We’re a super-small Vienna-based company, which consists of only 2 people. Our major project is for language learners — Reji. The other project is a translator app. How did we end up making an eye-care Mac app, you may ask? Here’s a quick wrap-up!

A proof of the author’s poor eyesight

As you may see on the profile pic above, I’m wearing glasses. They’re not just a part of my outfit. I have poor eyesight, I’m short-sighted. When a vision test a couple of months ago showed a drop again, I was kind of bitter about that.

Starting point

It finally pushed me towards at least reading some stuff on the Internet on how to use a computer with no harm for eyes. Some articles looked solid, some not, but what they shared in common is that strain is killing for both eyes and body. Obviously, sitting and staring at a screen involves a lot of strain. Even more obvious is that taking breaks is the most efficient solution against the strain.

Recently, I put together my own version of those tricks on working with no harm for eyes and body. I’m not an MD but those posts are more like the firsthand experience — what I tried out and what worked for me.

“Guy is resting from his daytime job at a computer, but putting himself in another danger” by Eduardo Flores on Unsplash

So, breaks are efficient but hard to take. We all know that. We’re always too busy with super-important tasks and too reluctant to stand up and take a walk (even around the office). Conclusion: our self-discipline sucks most of the time.

That’s what we wanted to fix with our app — to help users gain a habit of taking breaks, to guide them from “awww, back off, stupid timer, I’m busy right now” to “oh, a break! cool!”.

At the same time, we noticed that breaks are also easy-to-automate. Something like a timer on your smartphone, but a bit more motivational.

We also wanted to take a short break from Reji on which we’ve been working non-stop for the past 6 months. So, this break reminder thing looked like a perfect side hustle for us, which also involved making something useful (hopefully) at the same time.

First product steps

After a super-quick competitive research (we liked Time Out & Awareness the most, there are also a couple of other apps on the Mac App Store) and trying to figure out if people care about that eye strain at all (using Reddit and Quora), we decided to give it a shot. It was a simple idea, though, which didn’t require a lot of time or money to implement.

I should make a notice that the competition does roughly the same as ours — it’s called Breaks For Eyes, by the way— but those apps didn’t boom. In my humble opinion, it’s because they treat you as a disciplined person, so they basically do the same thing as a timer on your smartphone would. The timer goes off and you’re supposed to magically not ignore it and take a break.

One of the best books we’ve read on designing products. It’s Hooked by Nir Eyal.

In our world, it didn’t work like this. We snoozed it just like alarms for early hours. That’s what we wanted to fix with our app — to help users gain a habit of taking breaks, to guide them from “awww, back off, stupid timer, I’m busy right now” to “oh, a break! cool!”.

Probably, Breaks For Eyes is annoying, too. Its design was inspired by Nir Eyal’s book Hooked (if you’re a product designer, grab it now!). We tried to reward you for each not skipped break and make this reward different all the time to keep you.

Designing the app

We decided to keep the app super simple. The less cognitive effort you have to make, the easier it is to start using the app, right? We ditched all the customization and just went for a famous 20–20–20 rule. It says you should take a 20-second break every 20 minutes and look at something 20 ft (6 m) away, it’s also considered to be the most efficient remedy against eye strain.

The main part is the break reminder itself. We didn’t want to seek a trade-off between annoyance and motivation, so we went just for motivation. In other words, so that you don’t skip breaks. So, every 20 minutes your screen just gets blocked for 20 seconds.

Our app in action

During this time you’re supposed to look at something static around 20 ft (6 m) away from you. Your eyes can focus on objects at this distance and stay full relaxed at the same time.

Since you’re supposed not to look at the screen, the app plays a soft sound when the break is over. Then, you can get your eyeballs back on the screen.

The point of differentiation

That’s where our design experiments begin. Some entertainment is what we think may help you be excited not to skip breaks. So, we’ve prepared some stuff to show after every break for at least 4–5 days. After that time, we expect you either ditch the app (not desirable) or gain a habit and be comfortable with regular breaks (like you’re with tooth brushing).

Rewards mostly include streaks (“I’ve been skipping breaks for 2 days, if I skip it now, my streak is f****d ”) and beautiful pictures (Google Art Project) you can set as wallpapers.

It’s not 2 hours, of course. It’s around 7 days of not-skipped breaks. I just have an older version with a bug.

On the very first day of field tests, it turned out that it’s not very convenient to see a blocked screen in the middle of a conference call. So, we added an iPhone-alarm-like ability to snooze breaks for some time. Going to be in a meeting or watching a movie in the next 2 hours? Put Breaks For Eyes on pause for 2h. It won’t disturb you.

Results

It took us 2 weeks to make the app. After week 1, there was already something feasible to test. Since around that time, I became a very loyal user myself.

Since it’s a design wrap-up, there’s no place for marketing bullshit here, but the app really helped me to be less tired at the end of the day, and even be a bit more productive because of our Pomodoro-like timer in the menu bar. When the timer is ticking, I want to accomplish more before my screen gets blocked. I may be a bit biased for obvious reasons.