Back in the day at sparkfun we just wired up a safety beacon to an Ardoino and called it a day.
Nyan cat does not add any value.
Busy Status Bar
471–480 of 546 posts
Re: Busy Status Bar
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Eventually people will realize the light is busy when the person isn’t really busy Like the geniuses that block off their whole day everyday on their calendar or set their Teams status to unavailable all day.
Doing this every day is a problem. Doing it 1-2 days/week is the difference between being able to get some focus time to deliver something of value, and just being an internal search engine. My job has lots and lots of calls. I am happy to leave most of my calendar open. But most mornings, and at least one full day every 2 weeks is mine, and no, you can't have it, you're not entitled to it, it's important to me I hav…
1 day every 2 weeks?!?!
Re: Busy Status Bar
#473This is a neat idea (and good looking product), but unfortunately the issue is the people who tend to interrupt you in the office ignore all explicit signals in my experience. Wearing noise cancelling headphones is an accepted sign of “in the flow, pls don’t interrupt” yet some folks feel like it doesn’t apply to them. Or they’d just stand next to your desk waiting for your attention. I’m pretty jaded (and probably s…
I don't think you have the right to tell your coworkers to leave you alone. Part of working means collaboration and if you're unwilling to do that, you don't belong on a team. You're not doing brain surgery that will permanently alter the life of some helpless patient. you're not meticulously stacking the last card on top of a 10 ft house of cards exhibit where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your concentration strays to show your face to another human being and utter a few words.
Re: Busy Status Bar
#474This is a neat idea (and good looking product), but unfortunately the issue is the people who tend to interrupt you in the office ignore all explicit signals in my experience. Wearing noise cancelling headphones is an accepted sign of “in the flow, pls don’t interrupt” yet some folks feel like it doesn’t apply to them. Or they’d just stand next to your desk waiting for your attention. I’m pretty jaded (and probably s…
There is a special place in hell for PMs who can't wait for daily standup to get your status update.
There is an even more special place in hell for PMs who schedule an additional regular status update meeting.
Re: Busy Status Bar
#475This is at least the 3rd version of this product idea that I’ve seen in the past decade. Certainly the nicest design! The first time I saw this was some friends of friends who were trying to make it into a startup. They quickly discovered that their users liked the idea of a busy light for the office, but didn’t like to update it on or off throughout the day. So after the first few days people just defaulted to leavi…
But that will open up the market for a "Seriously Guys, I'm Actually Really" device that can be attached on the left-hand side, and activated when you really mean it. I see a lot of growth potential in this space.
Just put "literally" before it.
Re: Busy Status Bar
#476This is a neat idea (and good looking product), but unfortunately the issue is the people who tend to interrupt you in the office ignore all explicit signals in my experience. Wearing noise cancelling headphones is an accepted sign of “in the flow, pls don’t interrupt” yet some folks feel like it doesn’t apply to them. Or they’d just stand next to your desk waiting for your attention. I’m pretty jaded (and probably s…
It depends on the office culture. The last time I worked in an office, I used a red/green busy signal like this, and people would generally respect it.
Re: Busy Status Bar
#477This is a neat idea (and good looking product), but unfortunately the issue is the people who tend to interrupt you in the office ignore all explicit signals in my experience. Wearing noise cancelling headphones is an accepted sign of “in the flow, pls don’t interrupt” yet some folks feel like it doesn’t apply to them. Or they’d just stand next to your desk waiting for your attention. I’m pretty jaded (and probably s…
The general issue with people that don't care is, well, they don't care. The problem with being a reasonable person (or at least being the reasonable person in a certain situation) is that reason stops if the other party is not playing. It rarely helps to keep throwing subtle hints at somebody who just isn't going to cooperate or respect boundaries. It's the juggernaut in human relationships, especially when there's a power imbalance or differing incentives.
Re: Busy Status Bar
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s the problem: If the light is always on, or almost always on, then it quickly loses meaning. Unless the user actually adds green available time at regular intervals throughout the day, people learn that they have to ignore the red busy light and ask.
Or the person is always busy, and to contact them a person should use slack, email or some other method.
And then they don't respond to email or slack. Are they missing it? Ignoring it? No one knows. Meanwhile, time sensitive deadlines come and go.
There's no clear, easy protocol that works for everyone, unfortunately. Some people are always going to operate on the 'better to ask forgiveness than permission' model. And I say this as someone who is often in the 'always busy' camp.
Re: Busy Status Bar
#479This is a neat idea (and good looking product), but unfortunately the issue is the people who tend to interrupt you in the office ignore all explicit signals in my experience. Wearing noise cancelling headphones is an accepted sign of “in the flow, pls don’t interrupt” yet some folks feel like it doesn’t apply to them. Or they’d just stand next to your desk waiting for your attention. I’m pretty jaded (and probably s…
I don't think you have the right to tell your coworkers to leave you alone. Part of working means collaboration and if you're unwilling to do that, you don't belong on a team. You're not doing brain surgery that will permanently alter the life of some helpless patient. you're not meticulously stacking the last card on top of a 10 ft house of cards exhibit where tens of hours of work will be completely lost if your co…
You absolutely do. Many coworkers will bug you to ask instead of doing their own research, bug you to chitchat, etc.
They can always book time with you, send an email/IM, etc if there's something they can't resolve on their own.
You have your own deliverables and being interrupted every 10 minutes with inane questions that a web search or a look at the internal wiki/KB would have resolved is not a productive use of anyone's time.
Also, forcing them to wait produces better quality, better researched questions as hopefully they should make some attempt to resolve things on their own.
Re: Busy Status Bar
#480This is a neat idea (and good looking product), but unfortunately the issue is the people who tend to interrupt you in the office ignore all explicit signals in my experience. Wearing noise cancelling headphones is an accepted sign of “in the flow, pls don’t interrupt” yet some folks feel like it doesn’t apply to them. Or they’d just stand next to your desk waiting for your attention. I’m pretty jaded (and probably s…
There is a special place in hell for PMs who can't wait for daily standup to get your status update. There is an even more special place in hell for PMs who schedule an additional regular status update meeting.
Wait, I thought PMs were explicitly not allowed in standups, and that standups are explicitly not status meetings.