How can we help people find a good digital life balance?

Logi Free is a concept designed for the home and everyday life. It creates “shield” protecting the user from irrelevant, stressful information while providing the needed information at the right time. The service filters in and out information from the user’s digital devices depending on the situation and location.

Work Unit Video

Leisure Unit Video

Identified problems

Technology and digital devices are a big part of our everyday life, both during work and leisure. People are almost always reachable nowadays, which has turned into a problem as it often leads to stress and sometimes to ”digital burnout”. In the future, this problem will increase as agile workspaces are becoming more common - more people will work from home, at different times, with an increasing number of digital devices. They already get distracted and have a hard time separating work from leisure time, a problem further enhanced by an increasing number of digital devices and when working more from home.

The challenge is to find a good (digital) life balance. We have addressed this challenge together with our collaboration partner Logitech.

personas with problems

We have created 3 different personas that we believe would fit into this future vision of working and the problems that are implied.

Distraction

Ben works as a web designer from home. His main problem is distraction as he gets distracted from things around him when working from home.

Prioritizing

Annie works full-time from the office, but with flexible hours. She has a lot on her schedule and doesn’t know how to prioritize.

Stress

Kim works both as a remote English teacher and influencer. Because of “fear of missing out” Kim brings the phone everywhere resulting in stress and the feeling of always working.

What if we can design a solution that filters out the unnecessary information at thE right time?

To let the family on the beach be able to take a photo without being reminded of for example work related stuff. To make it possible to work without distraction from notifications that can wait. And without creating a feeling of FOMO for the user.

Logi Free helps people to find a good life balance and be more present in the moment

The Work unit

Helps the user to find a good balance between work and leisure, and minimize stress and distraction

The break-mode

During a break, the user can easily pop-up the top button to let through some of the information that is normally filtered out during work-mode. The same, but reversed, is available when in Leisure. Then it works as a stand-by (from work) button instead. A possibility to get some work emails even though enjoying leisure time.

The stand

A cut out stand for digital devices enabling the users to have the phone close when working, without getting disturbed. As it filters out the irrelevant information.

Solar energy use

The leisure units need to have fixed spots and are designed to be placed on windows using the suction cup on the backside of the products. They don’t need much energy, why they are designed to use solar energy as the energy source, working automatically from the window spot.

In the future it seems to be cheaper to use solar energy making it a good option for a sustainable power source for Logi Free.

The Service of Logi free

The service is the brain of Logi free and is connected to the Work unit and Leisure units to filter in and out information from the user’s digital devices

The service can be accessed through an app from any digital device where the user can personalize the different filter modes.

The Priority settings are things that always pass through the filters. It could for example be an important person, like all phone calls from Mike, and all messages including “soccer”.

We mapped out existing solutions within digital wellness on a matrix. Then we pointed out where we believe Logitech is today within digital wellness - focusing on products that are reducing the ergonomic issues about the workspace. We saw an opportunity for Logitech to look into the area of products that are improving the digital life balance, both work and leisure.

We organized a “How-Might-We-brainstorming session” with our classmates, where we explored questions based on our personas and their needs.

• How might we separate work and leisure for people working from home?

• How might we introduce a product that can help people spend more time on what’s good for their well being?

• How might we help people take more breaks during the working day?

• How might we help people getting more disconnected without having the feeling of missing something important?

“Turning it around reminds me of old times when you clock into work”

“It feels like ‘Yeah I’m going to work now” 

“It’s better to place the phone next to it than on top of it”

“Maybe it could be a charging station for your phone?”

“It would be nice to see how long time you have been at work”

“I like the Concept 1, it’s the most analogue!”

My role in the team

As we were a team of only two persons we have done pretty much everything together or side by side. We did the CAD of one unit each and also one Final Concept video each. Jenny did the Work Unit video and I did the Leisure Unit video. While Jenny was working with the Keyshot renderings of the two units, I did the graphics, the service layout, UI and the environment renderings.

Learning outcome

• I learned a how to do a How-Might-We-Workshop and other ideation skills

• Trend research - looking into the future of working

• Research structure and how to create a good survey for research

• (Logitech) branding skills

• To design a future concept for future scenarios

• Storytelling and animation in After Effects

• Improved skills in many areas like; problem solving, conceptualization, user-testing, workshop, and in After Effects and Premier Pro

• I learned from working with Jenny and skills from her