The Social Coaster

When working from home, brief unplanned social encounters are often absent. This can cause social isolation. Multiple strategies are intended to create a feeling of relatedness in existing technology. In this project, I investigated how to translate these strategies for a professional context by designing the Social Coaster to create brief unplanned social encounters for colleagues working from home.

The social coaster is a wooden coaster with an integrated screen. The coaster is connected to an existing aroma diffuser. As one employee needs a break and puts their coffee cup on the Social Coaster, a coffee scent is diffused in the colleagues’ workspaces. The screen of the first colleague says: ‘Wait for Colleagues’. Other colleagues can now choose to ‘catch their colleague on the way to the coffee machine’ like they might have done in the office. They can put their cup on the coaster to make a connection. The connected colleagues can now enjoy the joint action of drinking coffee together, or rather enjoy the awareness of each other presence it creates.