The rhythm in the workplace

Traditionally, it is believed that people have many different types of mental and pysical abilities. Good arrangement of them can help the development of these different abilities, wheras bad arragnement will damage these abilities. For example, in the school, students are encouraged to switch between mental centered activities and physical centered actitivites to ensure the health development, mentally as well as physically. It is the rhythm of school study with this play of contrasted activities. They reciprocate with each other. However, it seems most our current workplaces are designed just for working, not for relaxing. For the most of the time, employees don't know what to do if they feel tired…

Another category of activities is in terms of means and ends. : means oriented activities vs. ends oriented activities. For most of our work, it is ends oriented – we have goal and then plan, and what we do is to reach the ends according to the plan. These are planned actions according to Lucy Suchman. There is another kind of actions – we don’t have clear goals or plans at the beginning, instead we just act to respond to the situaitons. These are situated actions. While the planned actions are neccesary for management, they are close actions – we follow the plan and are closed to other options. Situated actions, on the other hand, are open actions, through which we find new meanings and ideas.

My idea is to design a system similar to ambient displays in our workplace especially software development workplaces (Software development is typically mental centered and planned action) for means oriented situated actions and let employees switch between planned actions and situated actions. I call this play of contrast as the rhythm in the workplace. But it is different from ambient display in that the ambient display uses part of our attention while we are working to increase our awareness of our environment, while this system will use our attention when we are resting to help us relax, and help to generate new ideas. This system should be fun, and have our employees personal information to get them more involved.

The design is situated and include both technical and social considerations to see how the technology can fit the particular social setting. So far, most of our system design is really just about how to design technology. In contrast with that, I believe we should design the whole system involving both technology and social settings…..