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Designing calmworklight: Signaling Focus with a Desk Light

Published: 18 June 2019 Publication History

Abstract

While working, we are not always in line with our ability to focus. Being more mindful of own cognitive abilities, including the ability to focus, may contribute to a more pleasant work experience. This paper presents calmworklight, an initial design proposal for dealing with this issue. calmworklight is a desktop lamp that responds to changes in peoples' focus strength as captured by a commercially available EEG device. The lamp's expression depends solely on the user's level of focus. If it is strong, the lamp returns a steady, calming warm light. If not, the light emission follows a breathing pattern, aiming to encourage the user to be more mindful of their breath and to cultivate a meditative focus. We conducted 3 user studies to get a better understanding of calmworklight's usage and benefits. The most striking outcome of the study is the worker's need for a regulating system that helps them plan when to socialize and when to focus, which should be considered for future workplace designs.

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Cited By

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  • (2022)Light-In-Light-Out (Li-Lo) Displays: Harvesting and Manipulating Light to Provide Novel Forms of CommunicationProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517730(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2020)Tangible Interaction with Light: A ReviewMultimodal Technologies and Interaction10.3390/mti40400724:4(72)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2020

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cover image ACM Conferences
DIS '19 Companion: Companion Publication of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2019 Companion
June 2019
410 pages
ISBN:9781450362702
DOI:10.1145/3301019
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Publication History

Published: 18 June 2019

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  1. attentive user interfaces
  2. brain-computer interfaces
  3. workplace

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June 23 - 28, 2019
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Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Light-In-Light-Out (Li-Lo) Displays: Harvesting and Manipulating Light to Provide Novel Forms of CommunicationProceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491102.3517730(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Apr-2022
  • (2020)Tangible Interaction with Light: A ReviewMultimodal Technologies and Interaction10.3390/mti40400724:4(72)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2020

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