My capstone project for the Human-Computer Interaction Design program at Indiana University. The Break Light is intended to help motivate people to get up and move around during computer use, through the familiar routine of drinking water and then getting up to refill the cup or go to the bathroom. The Break Light relies on increases in brightness and speed, and changes in color temperature over time and as the water level in the cup goes down, to gently remind the user that they should drink water, and refill the cup.
The Break Light: Calm Technology for Behavior Change
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
Notes de l'éditeur
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Occupational Heath and Safety Administration, 60% of all reported occupational illnesses involve repetitive trauma to the upper body and limbs. RSIs cost an estimated $20 billion a year in worker’s compensation.People know these things, they know how important it is to get up and move frequently while using a computer, but many don’t anyway. Why not?
While many risk factors for upper-limb injuries can be relieved through good posture, even a proper ergonomic posture can lead to injury if you are sitting still in the same posture for 6-8 hours a day. People who are physically active during their breaks from work were healthier and more productive than people who were sedentary during breaks.
Frequent short breaks are more effective at reducing injury than longer, less frequent breaks. Typical recommendations are every 20-30 minutes. Computer workers who are physically active during their breaks from work were healthier and more productive than people who were sedentary during breaks.
Disruption is what happens when the total length of time to finish a task is longer when you’re interrupted than when you’re not, even accounting for the time lost to the interruption. But not all interruptions are disruptive. The two factors that seem most important to disruption are the similarity to the interrupted task, and the complexity of the interruption. People can keep a sense of their short-term goals and what is needed to achieve those goals in working memory for a short period of time, but not when that memory is needed for another task – the more you have to think, the more of the original task you lose to the interruption.
When people working at computers are interrupted and, in the course of the interruption, their original task window is obscured by another window, they take longer to return to the original task than people whose original windows stayed more than 75% visible. When the window is obscured, people are more likely to cycle through their other open windows and check on other activities.
When people are able to delay responding to an interruption, they spend that time getting their current work into a stable state that they can easily return to – in the period between getting an alert and responding to it, people writing were more likely to finish sentences and paragraphs, finish copy-paste operations, save their work, etc. Even just a few minutes of warning gives people an opportunity to perform actions that reduce the potential for disruption.
I conducted a conceptual investigation of stakeholders, values and biases in my design space, and identified the values most important to me in the final design. As I explained earlier in the presentation, there is an inherent tension between the importance of physical activity and the importance of being able to focus on work. I do not want to impose my own priorities on others, so as much as possible I want to leave the resolution up to the user, based on their own circumstances and judgments. I respect personal autonomy and the right of individuals to decide what good health and self-care mean to them. Ethical persuasive computing depends on users understanding the purpose of a design and the goal of its persuasion, rather than tricking them into doing things they may not necessarily support.
Resetting the alarm and stopping the noise requires physical movement – getting up is implicated in the form of the alarm, not up to the individual to decide and then carry out.
As I learned in my ergonomics readings, the shorter frequent stretch breaks are the most important breaks for preventing injury. The micropauses and rest breaks are the most important and frequent breaks, but often the most difficult to actually do, for people who are not already inclined to taking breaks. I want to focus particularly on stretch breaks – those short, frequent breaks to physically get away from the computer.
The light patterns increase peripheral awareness of the water glass without disrupting periods of intense focus. As time goes by without the weight of the cup changing, the lights become brighter and blink rather than fade, drawing more attention. The patterns also become brighter and change faster as the weight of the cup goes down, to increase visibility and remind the user that they’ll need to get up and refill the water soon.In my testing I found that people like the light and were motivated to keep it shining, so picking up the cup to take a drink produces a pleasing pattern.
Purely visual, easy to ignore. One characteristic of flow is that the field of attention shrinks, anything at the periphery becomes invisible. The break light remains at the periphery and does not disrupt the flow experience. No one who has tested the device has reported it being distracting, several have experienced relatively deep flow while successfully using it for just a few hours, barely long enough for the novelty to wear off.
Getting up to get a beverage and go to the bathroom are familiar, common things that people already do anyway, I’m just encouraging them to do them more often. Drinking water steadily also has its own health benefits independent of computer use, so people interested in improving their self-care may have multiple motivations to use the device.
The break light is completely separate from your computer screen, will never obscure or disrupt what the user is working on. The course of action is obvious, familiar, implied in the very use of the device, and does not require a lot of time to think or make decisions.
The design is simple, its function is simple and easy to understand. People choose to use the break light as part of an existing commitment to improve their computing habits. But ultimately it is up to the individual to decide their priorities and what, for them, means taking care of themselves well. The device offers a flexibility of use that means people are free to fit it into their existing routines in different ways. If someone decides that sometimes they have priorities that are more important than getting up from their computer every 30 minutes, there’s no punishment, nothing is lost or reset, and the break light will be waiting when they’re ready to turn their attention back to it.