Fostering Productive Work in Hybrid Workplaces through an Ambient Display
In today’s collaborative work environments, knowledge workers experience frequent interruptions from their co-workers, either in-person at the office or through online channels, such as email, chat and video calls. In our previous work, we’ve studied interruptions and their impact on productivity, and developed a research prototype, the FlowLight, which combines a physical traffic-light like LED with an automatic interruptibility measure based on computer interaction data. A large-scale and long-term field study showed, amongst other results, that it reduced 46% of interruptions at work, and workers’ awareness about the disruptiveness and cost of interruptions at work. The recent trends towards hybrid workplace scenarios induced further challenges on workers to find a balance between focused deep work and collaboration. Due to the continuously broad interest from individuals and companies, the proposed project aims to turn the research prototype into a product-ready version to increase productivity and well-being at knowledge companies in the greater Zurich area and elsewhere. To that purpose we are looking for implementation and study partners.

Dr. André Meyer, Universität Zürich, Institut für Informatik
Prof. Dr. Thomas Fritz, Universität Zürich,Institut für Informatik
Laufzeit: 2022-2023