Beesy
Beesy - marbles IN words OUT
The shift to working and studying from home, accelerated by the global pandemic, presented challenges in terms of communication and space utilization. Common areas like dining tables were transformed into workstations, leading to difficulties in coordinating and communicating with other household members. It became crucial to find a way to indicate working status, especially during important meetings, to avoid interruptions and unnecessary distractions.
Beesy is developed as a communication assistance for hassle-free working/studying from home experiences when all members of household needs to work from home - especially the living area is shared as a working space.
Challenge
How can we design for an efficient asynchronous communication of the household regarding the work status when there is one shared working from home space?
Goal
Designing an effective and efficient system/tool so that the a person can communicate their meetings or focus time easily with the rest of the household.
Solution
Beesy is designed as a tangible device with LED lights and marbles to indicate different status of a person's work when working from a shared space. It shifts constant verbal communication to a physical device that users can interact with and have asynchronous communication.
Background
Team composition and my role
We were team of five designers for this project who worked throughout the project in various stages. Thanks to team's synergy, the brainstorming and ideation phases were highly productive and fruitful which helped us to develop a new tangible product as a solution.
Even though we all have worked form start to end in this project, my main contribution was coordinating the team throughout the process, and during the conceptualisation. As a result, I took initiatives during the prototyping, as well as user testing in different stages.
A familiar challenge: work from home
In recent years, also with the restriction of the global pandemic, there was a fast and huge shift to working and studying from home. As neither our household nor our apartments were ready for this sudden change, this created some difficulties in our lives.
Space utilisation in common living areas transformed to being new shared workspaces. This brought challenges such as communication of meeting or exam times to the others in the apartment.
With this project we explored the challenges faced and designed a solution for a better way of working from home together in such circumstances.
Research
We explored the problem space through desk research, user interviews, as well as a brainstorming session where we shared our first-hand experiences.
Result
BEESY - desk-top communication tool for shared working spaces
Throughout the design process, BEESY - our solution - was evolved into a honeycomb-shaped communication device. Users interact with BEESY through connecting magnetic marbles. They trigger the light to provide a better visual cue to the individuals in the shared space.
Easy and fun way of communication with marbles and lights
Three marbles communicate different status regarding the user's real-time work to provide information if they are reachable, their camera or microphone are on, etc. With the active marble numbers and color of BEESY, household can understand what the user is up to without verbally asking (and potentially disturbing the user).
Decorative light source for nights
We included a base station with a screen to provide real-time information on individual users' status.
Lastly, we designed each individual BEESY to fit together when stacked for a decorative light source in the living space when not in-use.
Reflection
This project provided me with valuable insights regarding the importance of tangible prototypes in conveying ideas and gathering feedback. The iterative nature of the design process highlighted the need for focused problem-solving and exploring modularity and scalability.
I also noticed that a team with diverse backgrounds and expertise together with a good synergy contributes the process while increasing the quality of the solution.
tl:dr
Beesy is a tangible communication device designed to address the challenges of working/studying from home in more than one person households.
It features hexagon-shaped lights that use LED lights and marbles to indicate a person's working or meeting status. This eliminates the need for constant verbal communication and provides a visible indication from a distance.
Additionally, Beesy's hexagons can be combined to create a decorative aspect in the living room when not in use.
