WEIGH-IN

Project Overview
We noticed that becoming overworked is more and more common. Burn-outs are at an all-time high and work output is often regarded as more important than mental well-being. We wondered if we could design a way to help professionals maintain balance in their work practices. Using the metaphor of a balance scale we explored what interaction we could design that could make office workers aware of how they were balancing time on the one hand versus workload on the other. This was an explorative project on how to utilize properties of the physical world in interactive products.
May 2018
3 Weeks Execution Time
Tangible Design Project
Eindhoven University of Technology
Teammates
   Dieuwertje - BA Industrial Design
   Emma - BA Industrial Design
What is Weigh-In about?
1.  Well-being: reduce the chances of over-working
2.  Awareness: creating awareness of the workload distribution amongst co-workers
3.  Proactiveness: acting proactively to maintain balance
How does it work?
1. Selecting tokens

workload is analyzed and the task tokens are chosen

2. Creating balance

the tokens are placed and balanced out by positioning the time slider

3. Maintaining balance

as time passes the time slider moves, maintaining balance is done by removing time tokens

PROCESS
In this project the focus was on using the strengths of tangible embodied interactions to design a tangible interactive product. We decided to focus our efforts on a target group of office workers. Especially professionals that work in teams on bigger projects were interesting to us, since they had to divide and manage workloads.
Setting our scope
Currently we have no clear way of seeing whether the work division we planned is working out.
We explored how we could use affordances, strong specificness and metaphors to create an interesting interaction that could help office workers divide and manage their work. We ideated on what this work division process is like and what factors are of importance. Intangible things like time, effort and importance of tasks could be made tangible.
Exploration
Finding a way to collaborate on maintaining a balanced work life could enhance the team dynamics.
We designed an object that resembles a half circle. Due to this shape it becomes clear that anything that is placed on top should be in balance. To further emphasize the metaphor of a balance scale we metaphorically wanted to allow people to balance the time they have with the tasks they need to accomplish.
Concept
At the beginning of the workday tasks are divided among the team. Each task a user plans to do is represented by a spherical token. The heavier the token the more effort (and time) is needed to accomplish the task. The connection of the weight of the ball and the effort needed helps users to navigate how to manage their workload in the next step.

Then the user slides the time slider back to the outside of the Weigh-In scale. This sets a timer for the workday. As time goes by, this slider will slide to the middle of the scale.

The task tokens the user has collected are then placed on the opposite end of the scale to balance out the scale. Important tasks can be locked in place. This locking interaction makes sure that these tasks are prioritized.

As the workday progresses tasks that are accomplished are taken away. If the tasks take longer than planned or the office worker is held up in some way, the scale starts to tip over. This is a clear indication that the balance of this user is off and action needs to be taken. Then, this can further result in three different scenarios.

Scenario 1

The user him/herself will decide to take a task of off the planning and accomplish it another day.

Scenario 2

A co-worker sees the imbalance and strikes up a conversation to try and help the user by taking over the task of helping out.

Scenario 3

The imbalance becomes too large and the scale tips over. The tasks that are not locked in roll off the scale and fall on the table. In this scenario the tipping over would alert the user and the co-workers that action needs to be taken to fix the imbalance.

Balance is something we are so familiar with in our daily lives that we felt that this concept would transfer very nicely to the balance within a workday.
REFLECTION
This was the first project in which the focus was not on creating the most practical product. The focus had been on exploring what tangible embodied interactions can be and what power they have. This approach was new to me and throughout this project I started to realize how limited my ways of thinking had been by the limitations of practicalities. In this process I felt a lot more freedom to explore.
In the physical world we know what reaction we can expect from the interaction with an artifact.
Secondly, this project sparked my interest in the tangible side of design. Screen based interactions have the advantage that they are so flexible, but this flexibility can be confusing as well. In the physical world it is much easier to understand how we interact with artifacts and what reaction we can then expect from that artifact. Playing with the universal properties of the physical world is exciting to me and I believe that designs that result from this sort of approach can be more intuitive and more easy to use.

© Romy Koppert. All rights reserved.