A UBC computer scientist has invented a desk light, called the FlowLight, which automatically switches from green to red when the user is working and should not be disturbed by coworkers.
“The light is like displaying your Skype status – it tells your colleagues whether you’re busy or open for a chat,” said Thomas Fritz, an assistant professor at UBC who started working on the invention at the University of Zurich.
Fritz’s idea for the FlowLight came from working with ABB Inc., an international engineering company. He witnessed employees resorting to such measures as placing road safety cones on their desk when they were coding and didn’t want to be interrupted.
FlowLight switches between green and red lights based on the user’s keyboard and mouse activity. The automatic aspect of the light was important to Fritz, as he says that once someone is focused on a task, stopping to manually turn on a light or close an office door can be disruptive to the work.
“When you’re interrupted, it can take a long time to get back into your work, and it’s more likely you’ll make mistakes,” he said.
The light was tested with about 450 ABB employees, who reported positive results. Testers were interrupted less frequently, but also noted that it changed the office culture so that people were more respectful of each other’s time and aware of when they could interrupt a colleague. Some employees even said the use of the lights motivated them to finish their work faster.
FlowLight is designed to only turn red for a maximum amount of time each day despite how hard someone works, which Fritz said prevents employees from feeling guilty for not working hard enough or getting competitive with one another.
Fritz and his PhD student from the University of Zurich, Manuela Züger, recently tested a more advanced version of the FlowLight with companies in Vancouver to determine whether it could work with biometric sensors in place to detect heart rate variability, pupil dilation, eye blinks or brainwave activity. They are collaborating with Interaxon and Mio Global, both Canadian companies that develop biometric sensors, on this research.
The FlowLight was developed with David Shepherd at ABB, PhD students Züger and Andre Meyer, as well as researchers at ABB Christopher Corley, Boyang Li, Vinay Augustine, Patrick Francis, Nicolas Kraft and Will Snipes.
