SQUID: Introducing HYGIEA!

What is #workplaceburnout?

When a worker feels a state of complete mental, physical and emotional exhaustion.
The pandemic has dramatically increased the number of remote workers, with two-thirds of Australians currently working remotely. And many emerging technologies are changing how workers and businesses think about work from anywhere (WFA). However, studies on this phenomenon have shown that there is a clear upward trend in the number of people who suffer from career burnout due to work-life imbalance.

Based on the current situation in the problem area and the predicted future problems, we designed three products, hoping to improve common workplace burnouts.

There are many reasons for workplace burnout, such as long working hours, excessive workload, urgent deadlines, relationships with colleagues, etc.

After sorting it out, we decided to focus on three stressors:

This project is designed for the world in 2030, so we refer to the 2022 Future Technology Trend Forecast Report published by Future Today Institute (https://futuretodayinstitute.com) to construct our future world, which has three characteristics:

Work From Anywhere (WFA) becomes the universal working model
The boundaries between work and life are blurred, and long-term use of technology leads to fatigue (Digital Fatigue), loneliness and isolation.

6G will soon be available to the public
With a network without any delay and a very large transmission volume, the new 6G infrastructure can be seen everywhere, and the world is actively looking for other applications of this technology.

AI is developing rapidly and everywhere
Potential moral deviations caused by training materials or developers, privacy and personal data protection, security and risks are all the world’s concerns about this technology.

An AI-powered home office with smart furniture designed to reduce workplace stressors and prevent burnout.

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Values
& Impacts

Our solution aims to solve the issues around workplace burnout independently as well as from a cultural perspective by building on what currently exists to support companies. We aim to go that step further when understanding what pain points trigger burnout and how can we ultimately stop it from happening in the first place.

This three-part design solution incorporated in ‘Hygiea’ offers people the flexibility to work with advanced technology or to alter it based on their demands and working arrangements. We hope to introduce Hygiea as a way to add to your office business structure and work internally for the company rather than existing companies that offer external lifelines to improve your mental stability while working. While we want employees to feel supported by Hygiea we also want to mend the bridge of improving work-life balance, Increasing awareness, and supporting workplace cultures.

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Moving forward, we have several steps in refinement to consider as we more directly define the way our concept addresses workplace burnout. This will be backed up with user testing and research which we will use to inform design decisions along the way. Currently, our concept seeks to improve the “Work From Anywhere” future situation in a general manner, targeting both employees and managers whilst taking a three-pronged approach to alleviating different issues.  Using research into the contemporary workplace, we will focus our concept on an integrated solution that addresses key issues to do with workplace burnout. This will allow us to explore more defined ways in which sensors and technology will function, paving the way toward prototyping and testing.‍