Felix Schwamkrug | Homely Office

A good office has a regulated schedule, low-threshold communication and collaboration, and social breaks but a lot of distraction and interference. Working at home, on the other hand, has its own problems, like keeping up boundaries, meeting new people, and collaborative teamwork suffers when working remotely. A healthy work-life balance can be achieved by confining psychologically demanding tasks to a physical location, even if those lines are drawn virtually. Homely Office is combining these work models while focusing on interaction with co-workers and the room itself in a natural way to make working-from-home more efficient and more enjoyable. There are three main modes: “Work”, “Chat”, and “Nap”. “Work Mode” acts as the hub and interface to the office and the coworkers; switching to “Zone Mode” turns off distractions and collaboration functions, while “chat” mode enables chatter and social pauses like “water cooler” breaks. Finally, “nap mode” is for quiet pauses from work. The docks enable many of the homely office’s features, like creating virtual rooms and providing localization for the smartphone as the communications device.