Is digital distraction stealing your time?
You can take back control.
Our proven effective workshops empower you to break free from addictive designs, simplify digital life, and redesign devices to serve your needs.
Backed by our 10+ years of award-winning research.
+58%
better ability to focus
1.5+ hours/day
saved time
Trusted by leading universities to help students and staff reclaim their attention
How does it work?
There are hundreds of digital focus tools that can create the digital life you want. We make it effortless to find and implement the right ones.
The Reduce Digital Distraction Workshop helps you to:
articulate needs
Identify your digital challenges and goals
explore solutions
Discover digital focus tools and strategies tailored to your needs
choose & implement
Apply the strategies that work best for your lifestyle
Formats
2hr Reduce Digital Distraction Workshop
Comprehensive way to articulate needs and find tailored solutions. Reflect, explore & implement, & get personalised follow-ups.
1hr ReDD Crunch Time Workshop
Deadline-oriented crash course in the digital focus tools that are essential when you need to be your most productive self.
Get empowered to...
Hide addictive features on websites & apps (YouTube Shorts, Insta Reels...)
Use blocking tools to eliminate distractions during prime work or leisure hours
Use computer-based 2-factor authentication, so you can put your phone away
Add delays when you open apps like TikTok to avoid mindless use
... and much more!
PRACTICAL SUPPORT
Includes everything you need to change your digital life
The ReDD Workshop makes it easy to achieve the digital life you want, thanks to letters from your past self, hands-on support in our Help! Café, and data-driven insights into your personal journey.
“Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own” — Bruce Lee
Letters from your past self
Hands-on support
Data-driven insights
RESEARCH-POWERED
Based on our award-winning research & engineering
The ReDD Workshop and its tools are based on our analyses of (so far) 550+ digital focus tools, 54,000+ user reviews, and 250+ interviews, and our decades of experience building open-source software used by 130,000+ people around the world.
The workshop format is based on continuous learning from 250+ workshops at 20+ universities, schools, and organisations, and best practices in behaviour change.
What people say
How to access ReDD
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Our story
In May 2019, Dr Ulrik Lyngs & Maureen Freed gathered 8 students in a dusty seminar room at an Oxford college with a bold mission: to help them regain control over their digital lives. What began as Ulrik‘s PhD research into digital distraction was evolving into the ReDD Workshop, a practical intervention to empower anyone to tailor their devices for productivity, wellbeing, and a balanced life.
From those humble beginnings, the ReDD Project grew organically through word-of-mouth and genuine need. We refined our approach through 250+ workshops, and published rigorous research showing that it works. Today, any institution can train their own facilitators, enabling anyone to redesign digital life to meet their needs.
Pilot workshop in 2024 at Sheffield Hallam University, UK
- 2016Foundational researchIn September 2016, Ulrik started his computer science PhD at the University of Oxford with Sir Nigel Shadbolt, exploring how to redesign digital devices to support people‘s control over time and attention. His thesis used psychological theory to analyse hundreds of digital focus tools and formed the basis of ReDD.
- 2019From early concept to routine deliveryIn May 2019, Ulrik & Maureen piloted an early prototype of the ReDD Workshop at an Oxford college. After COVID-19 hit, an online version was created. By late 2021, ReDD was the most popular workshop offered at the University Counselling Service.
- 2022Exploring new formats & audiencesWe piloted large-scale workshops (up to ~80 participants) at Mahidol University in Thailand, workshops for teenagers in Danish high schools, and workshops for university staff at the University of Oxford.
- 2023SepFirst evaluation submitted for publicationInsights from the ReDD workshops were published at the 2024 ACM CHI Conference (thanks to 280 Oxford students who consented to share their data for research purposes), winning a Best Paper Honourable Mention award.
- 2023Sep
Towards impact at scale: UK-wide pilotsEPSRC-funding supported an exploration of ReDD's potential for larger impact, with pilots at the universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, Warwick, Sheffield Hallam, and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. - 2024JunOxford University's MPLS Early Career Social Impact AwardThe ReDD Project was one of the winners at the 2024 MPLS Impact Awards, which recognizes outstanding contributions to society from early-career researchers in the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division.
- 2024NovFirst facilitator courseIn collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, the launch of a Facilitator Course made ReDD truly scalable via a train-the-trainers model.
Team
Creators
Maureen Freed
Psychotherapist &
mental health consultant
Former Deputy Head of Counselling at the University of Oxford
Dr Ulrik Lyngs
Computer scientist &
cognitive psychologist
Research Fellow at the University of Oxford
Advisors & Collaborators
Professor Sir Nigel Shadbolt, FRS FREng FBCS
Head of the Human Centred Computing group, University of Oxford
Dr Laura Alessandretti
Associate Professor at Section for Cognitive Systems, Technical University of Denmark
