For workaholics who do not like getting disturbed by their colleagues, scientists have invented a desk light that automatically switches from green to red, putting them in a \u201cDo Not Disturb\u201d zone.
\nA scientist from the University of British Columbia (UBC) got the idea for the \u201cFlowLight\u201d from working with an international engineering company where employees were resorting to putting road safety cones on their desk when they were coding and didn\u2019t want to be interrupted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe light is like displaying your Skype status\u2014it tells your colleagues whether you\u2019re busy or open for a chat,\u201d said Thomas Fritz, Assistant Professor at the UBC who started work on the invention at the University of Zurich.<\/p>\n
The light shifts between green and red depending on the keyboard and mouse activity.<\/p>\n
According to Fritz, it is cumbersome to turn on the light manually or close the door or put a cone on your desk once you are engrossed in your work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re interrupted, it can take a long time to get back into your work and it\u2019s more likely you\u2019ll make mistakes,\u201d Fritz said in a news release published on the UBC\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
The light showed positive results when tested with 450 employees who reported lesser interruptions.<\/p>\n
The test results also showed a change in the office culture with people being more respectful towards each other\u2019s time and work.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlowLight is designed to only turn red for a maximum amount of time each day despite how hard someone works. That feature is key to preventing employees from feeling guilty for not working hard or getting competitive with one another,\u201d Fritz noted.<\/p>\n
IANS<\/strong><\/p>\n Picture source: Alamy Image<\/strong><\/p>\n Picture used for illustrative purposes alone<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For workaholics who do not like getting disturbed by their colleagues, scientists have invented a desk light that automatically switches from green to red, putting them in a \u201cDo Not Disturb\u201d zone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[44,49],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kt10.khaleejtimes.ae\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}