At one of my workplaces, I was required to install an application called Timedoctor. This application tracked all my behavior on my laptop in real-time: it could sense whether I was active or idle, what programs I was using, what file or tab I had open. While it’s presented as a way to ensure employee productivity and accurate track working time for paychecks, it felt really dystopian and invasive. I remember spending so much energy stressing about appearing productive by switching tabs and clicking random things that I didn’t even end up being any more productive than without it.

When it comes to digital privacy, especially concerning more serious matters like crime, some may argue: if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have no reason to mind being watched. I disagree to an extent. Privacy is essential to a feeling of comfort and security. Invading it for the sake of preventing “bad” behaviours will only discomfort everyone, and those who intended to commit such acts will find ways to circumvent it anyway.

Even now, the line between too much and too little surveillance continues to shift. Facial expression trackers in public spaces, mouse movement trackers, eye trackers, etc.—these are all existing inventions currently in use. While they have supposed benefits for worker productivity, I argue that they contribute to the toxic “hustle culture” aspect of capitalism. They’re more efficient at making people put on a facade of ideal behavior than addressing root issues causing misbehavior. In my personal experience, overwork and the resulting exhaustion are the biggest obstacles to my productivity. Forcing myself awake during work hours only temporarily addresses the issue, and exacerbates it in the long term.

I wanted to raise the question: what are the consequences of these new AI/ML technologies being made—who are they really benefitting? When they solve problems, are they treating symptoms or the cause—or even contributing to them?

Then, I asked: how can I build an application using AI/ML technology that makes things…objectively worse?

‍And thus, Snoozer was born.

Snoozer is a satirical machine learning project that criticizes hustle culture and the toxicity of an environment that prioritizes productivity over health. Snoozer incorporates a machine learning model trained on my facial expressions to detect when I start nodding off. If I am detected as “asleep” for longer than a specified amount of time, a program will run that sends a visual/auditory jumpscare on my laptop screen. Hopefully, this will shock my system enough that I will be startled awake. Despite seeming innocuous or even helpful for maintaining focus, it actually exacerbates the underlying issue of overworking.

Data Collection

I took photos of myself in various "asleep" and "awake" states and uploaded them to Teachable Machine. Given the scope of the project, I was unable to amass a giant dataset of photos of faces and label them all. Instead, I curated a very clean dataset: all my photos were taken in one session, with the same face-centered cropping, clothing, lighting, and plain background. The only variable that changed was the angle of my face and whether my eyes were closed. This dataset performed well enough to use as my final one, but in the future, I would explore facial feature landmark models that can track more detailed expressions and movements.

Design

I created some visual prototypes in Illustrator to gauge how I wanted the popup and UI to look. I intentionally made it look simple and “cute” with colorful branding and a rounded typeface to create an innocuous facade that conceals a more sinister function.

Development

I used p5.js hosted on Glitch to create a html website with an embedded p5 sketch. I created custom classes for my wake button and quiet toggle. One issue I encountered was forgetting to account for modularity. I built the Snoozer interface relative to the entire screen, so when I wanted to put a scrollable html site behind it, it kept pushing the entire p5.js canvas container to the bottom of the screen. In the future, I would want Snoozer to take the form of a chrome extension or executable file that can run as an overlay over other programs.