Daily Stack
Daily Stack is a playful tool that helps you become more aware of your daily work-flow and time management. By creating a physical representation of your tasks, Daily Stack speaks subtly to your conscience and helps you manage your time through unobtrusive ambient feedback.
About the project
By observing a user working from home we found that it is hard to manage your time and not spend it on procrastination like Facebook, YouTube or shopping on Ebay. Another common problem was overworking and not being able to let go of the work and take time off. We used these insights as a starting point for our concept.
We spent a lot of time experimenting with different materials and kinds of feedback. We wanted to work towards a well-crafted object combined with electronic behaviour and feedback. In the end we went for a very clean and simple version of our concept, with the base as the only object containing electronics.
Daily Stack consists of a base device and a collection of wooden bricks in different shapes and colours. The bricks represent different kinds of tasks and time-intervals. By adding a brick to the base you commit yourself to the task and time span that the selected brick represents. Daily Stack communicates with an desktop widget on your computer that enables you to keep track of your time and tasks in progress. It also enables you to browse through your past and and compare your days in a colourful informative pattern.
The project was done in collaboration with Sebastian Rønde Thielke during a two-week physical computing course at CIID. It has been featured in Wired, Designboom, Gestalten’s “A Touch of Code”, It’s Nice That, and numerous other media.
Technology used in prototype
- Arduino Pro Mini
- Load-cell from IKEA kitchen scale (Ordning)
- Scrap wood
- Adobe Air
- Some more bits and pieces
