IocTober Day 25 - Illumniated door sign

We’re creating an IoT solution for every day of “IocTober”.

Open plan offices stink. All the so-called benefits of “collaboration” are, if you ask me, a smokescreen for cramming more people into a surveillance fishtank. Creative work often needs concentration, and for a large segment of the working population, open spaces destroy concentration. Look at the vast market for headphones if you doubt.

But we do admit that a closed door can be a collaboration turn off.

So how do we solve a nuanced social problem? Indiscriminate application of Technology, of course! (That’s so zany it might just work!) Let’s say you’re lucky enough to have an office. Or perhaps you have a “Millenial Office” (that is a desk in an open plan hellscape, a pair of kickass headphones, and a fuck-off-and-let-me-concentrate ’tude). How do we balance productivity and approachability?

This is a solution I came up with for my own office a couple of years ago. My desk does not face the door, so it’s difficult for visitors to know when I’m on the phone, even with a windowed panel to allow them to see in.

So I designed a 3D printed illuminated sign which lets me signal “Come on in”, or “I’m on the phone”, “I’m not actually here”, or “Outlook hazy, knock and see”.

It’s intended that you pop the handle off your door, slip the ring over the shaft, and reattach the handle. If you don’t have a door, you can use the spike on whcih you display the skulls of people who interrupted you.

If you work for the Laundry, the design is open source, so you can add a sector for “matters of dimensional security being discussed, do not enter without clearance”.