Instrumental
Project Overview
Instrumental is the key to work-life harmony. Immerse yourself in captivating lo-fi music created by your breaks, fueling your next work session with inspiration and focus.
My Role
As the Interaction Lead, I orchestrate a harmonious fusion between our physical and digital product, refining our ecosystem through meticulous user testing and crafting controls that cater to authentic fidgeting behaviors, ensuring our product is built on relevant work and break habits.
Tool
Figma
Python
Blender
Rhino
Time
Fall - Spring 2023
Jan- May
Team
Chung Wei Jin
Jake Aicher
Jessica Lam
Stephanie Tweddle
The problem
Desk job workers, including students and designers working from home, often experience burnout due to prolonged work sessions without taking breaks.
Causing chronic workplace stress that affects their well-being, quality of work and work-life balance.
The Solution
The Instrumental device builds healthy work-life balance by encouraging you to take breaks and step away from your work environment. By creating unique lo-fi soundtracks from the places you go on your break, it fuels your work playlist with inspiration and focus. Its biggest aim to prevent burnout before it happens, promoting sustainable working habits that improve well-being as well as productivity.
Cool! But How does Instrumental works
Set
First set your preferred break interval for the type of work you will be doing
Notify
The device will gently notify you with vibrations that intensify as break time approaches, letting you know its time to find a stopping point
Go
Go for a walk! — Research suggests separating from your work and moving around. Collect music tracks in the form of bubbles, transforming breaks, often thought of as unproductive, into a valuable part of your productivity
Listen
The bubbles collected on break compose a unique soundtrack letting you “Listen to your break”, providing inspiration and focus as you return to work
Repeat! Get notified when its time to take a break again, and the cycle repeats...
Features
Working Sessions
Create your optimized work session by customizing the ideal break length and frequency
Generative Music
Boost your focus with unique music generated from the places you go on your breaks
Playlist
Listen to previous work sessions and revisit your favorite music
Break Insights
Visualize your work and break habits over time by visit the data collected over a year
Fidget
Fdgeting Inputs to help with focus and track distracted period
Research
496
Data points
140
‘I’ Statements
50
‘We’ Statements
19
Insights
Through our initial research, we noticed burnout, breaks, and hobbies were somehow related.
Our goal is to find out the correlation between them.
We conducted diary studies, user interviews, user observations, cultural Probes, and sent surveys to collect quantitative data. By grouping data points and creating related statements. We conclude with 19 unique insights.
3 working styles
With a deeper understanding of our target audience, we delve into the crux of the issue and explore potential solutions. Our focus is on addressing the negative stigma associated with breaks in the workplace, as well as the inherent lack of immediate perceived value attributed to breaks.
The Procrastinator
A lack of perceived progress
Feeling of guilty for taking breaks
Inconsistent work habits
social media/internet
HMW celebrate and recognize the value of rest and relaxation as integral parts of success and productivity, rather than viewing them as a hindrance?
The Workaholic
A lack of perceived progress
Feeling of guilty for taking breaks
Inconsistent work habits
Unhealthy work habits (overwork)
social media/internet
HMW help users understand the importance and participate in breaks despite a busy schedule?
The Hustler
lack of motivation to take breaks
feeling of guilty taking breaks
feelings of guilt for taking breaks
(potential) toxic environment
social media/internet
societal norms/hustle culture
family/friends
HMW add a task prioritization structure to help clarify goals in a fun way without making it a burden?
Key finding
With a deeper understanding of our target audience, we delve into the crux of the issue and explore potential solutions. Our focus is on addressing the negative stigma associated with breaks in the workplace, as well as the inherent lack of immediate perceived value attributed to breaks.
HMW change the stigma around taking breaks and increase their value to an individual in a work environment
Prototype
To evaluate our physical product, we utilized a 3D-printed model integrated with interactive digital components, each representing various key fidget interactions within the product.
Fidgeting inputs
Having buttons and toggles around the device, users can make use of these inputs to fidget around different areas of the device.
Music Manipulation
Using python, we created a script that alter music audio base on the users fidgeting input
User testing
We user tested with over 20 people using the functional prototype above. The test’s goal is to see if fidgeting with music during work would be too distracting. We wanted to observe users interacting with our product during a real work session and see how our device would company them.
And the result was validating, the main user feedback are...
felt more focused as the work session moved on
fun to play with occasionally, will not disrupt work.
symmetrical form allows free movement
Final Render
Looking Back
Creating interaction beyond digital space
UX has traditionally been synonymous with the digital realm, but my passion has always extended beyond these boundaries, driving me to design interactions that transcend the divide between the digital and physical worlds. Instrumental represents my inaugural step towards realizing this design philosophy, as it addresses fidgeting habits—an everyday physical action that blends into our lives. Throughout the creation of our physical product, I was struck by the revelation that testing physical interactions offers a new dimension to design. Liberated from the confines of a screen, real-world interactions open up a realm of possibilities for crafting more humane and innovative designs. This journey taught me an important lesson: good design should not be constrained by its medium, but rather by our ability to forge meaningful connections with our users.
More Projects
