LoopScroll: Exploring Knitting-based Tangible Input for Mindful Screen Interaction

Infinite-scrolling interfaces on social media reduce effort in content discovery but also encourage doomscrolling, raising concerns about digital overconsumption and its negative effects on mental wellbeing. While prior work has explored software-based self-monitoring mechanisms, few studies have examined tangible design interventions at the input level during screen interaction. We present LoopScroll, a knitting-inspired system that translates hand movements into screen-scrolling actions. Drawing on the rhythmic qualities of knitting, LoopScroll maps users’ movement tempo to scroll speed, introducing friction into scrolling to encourage more deliberate engagement with screen content. The knit-to-scroll interaction also produces a growing knitted piece that materializes screen time, fostering temporal awareness through a playful, tangible trace of use. Through design exploration, we discuss how knitting-based gestural input can serve as an embodied attentional intervention against doomscrolling, contributing a tangible interface as a design provocation for input-level resistance to mindless scrolling.