Melotox
App product design · digital balance through music · concept and product design, not a medical device
Melotox is an app I designed to help people reclaim their time and rebalance their digital habits through music, by setting personalised daily usage limits and scheduled breaks that are set to music rather than to a warning.
It is the software version of the same argument the paintings are making, which is why it sits next to them on this site.
The problem I was aiming at
Heavy smartphone use is doing real damage to mental health. The World Health Organization study I leaned on reports that time spent on digital devices rose sharply after the global pandemic, and alongside it anxiety, depression and sleep disorders. Younger generations are exposed to constant stimulation from social media and digital content, and what follows is reduced concentration, more stress and fewer real relationships.
Existing digital wellness tools mostly do one thing: they cap your screen time. Capping is a fence. It tells you where not to go and offers nothing in the place you are being pushed out of, which is why people disable it in week two.
Why music, and what I am not claiming
Research behind music therapy finds that particular music can lower stress hormones and encourage the release of serotonin. Melotox uses that as its mechanism instead of using guilt: it looks at how you actually use your phone and builds personalised music sessions around it, so the detox is something you walk toward rather than something you are locked out of.
The design also folds in meditation, breathing exercises and mindfulness alongside the music, which puts it next to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of good health and wellbeing. To be exact about what this is: Melotox is a product design and a concept, not a clinical treatment and not a medical device, and I do not want it read as one.
The three parts that make it stick
Customisable limits, so the rules are the user’s own and not mine. Emergency access, because a tool that cannot be overridden at the wrong moment is a tool people delete. And gamified encouragement, because the honest truth about behaviour change is that it needs a reason to come back tomorrow.
The ambition is not a detox week. It is to change the relationship between a person and their device far enough that digital balance stops being aspirational and becomes ordinary.