Eyrie
Michelle Wong
When situated in dense urban space, how does the WFH experience benefit from the extension of routine beyond the physical environment?
Responding to safety restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, WFH culture replicates the activities and interactions of the standard work and school day from a static environment. However, this new normal falters when accounting for the transitional spaces: the pre-pandemic commute – physical transition – allows the commuter the consistent affordance of time to achieve higher degrees of mindfulness–mental transition – on the journey between home and work.
Addressing the need for mindfulness in stationary environments, Eyrie is a schedule-linked screen lock of simulated environments, delivering mindfulness prompts at the start and end of the workday. Eyrie reorients the environmental psychologies of the home to retain cognitive balance between work and leisure.
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INSIGHT
Throughout my first remote internship during WFH mandates, I found difficulties in separating my work from my domestic life alongside having the added mental fatigue during the work day.
At the tail end of my research, I found possible causations to fatigue in Construal Level Theory, an environmental psychology theory attributing detail perception to the lateralization of brain function. When engaging with an environment up close, the detailed comprehension stresses the left side of the brain. When viewing the space from a farther vantagepoint, such as the ground from an plane window, the right side of the brain processes the scene through series of generalizations and abstractions.
As WFH positions primarily involve screen-based work in a fixed small space, stress from left-side brain activity contributes to amplified mental fatigue in urban workers and students.
IDEA
Delivered via Chrome app at the start and end of the workday, Eyrie is a schedule-linked screen lock to develop introspective psychological distance through alternate landscapes and mindfulness prompts. Hinging upon natural environments elevated to a bird’s eye view, the Eyrie experience locks alternate spaces on the desktop screen as a variant environment to the typical use perspective of the fixed interior space.
Engaging with mindful meditation leads to right brain activation, improving emotional health and furthering creative endeavors. Meditation also acts as a neurological anxiety control: an important function during these uncertain times. In the midst of social restrictions, building empathetic links with the self rather than others develops a higher degree of control during stressful situations in isolated environments.
IMPACT
Users engage with Eyrie to commence and conclude their workday with a focus on mindfulness. Continued engagement with the experience provides rhythm to the work week by creating alternative spaces with blank use contexts. These transitional spaces build escapism environments within the home. From a stakeholder’s perspective, dedicated school/work communication platforms (i.e. Canvas, Slack) will ideally adopt Eyrie when expanding their offerings toward the mental wellbeing of employee/ student user groups.
Eyrie serves as an aid to building an introspective routine. In the long-term, the users will have accumulated the discipline to engage with meditation beyond Eyrie’s guidance. When the natural spaces become safely accessible, the user can transition the habits around the mindful commencing and ending the day into these physical spaces.
Michelle Wong
As a multi-disciplinary creative with a passion for experience design and exhibition curation, my design work addresses the intersections of human interaction and historical precedence. Incorporating my previous background in architecture and the fine arts, my projects delve into the complexities of social and individual identity via iterative design and critical dissertations.