Studies show that certain types of music can enhance productivity and create a happier work environment. During repetitive tasks such as data entry, music can increase the efficiency of the worker.
That's why Can Aslan's Windows Ambience feature is such a great idea. To reduce distracting machine noise, the Turkish UX/UI designer suggests building a variety of soundscapes straight into the taskbar.
How Does it Work?
Aslan suggests a simple pop-up menu that appears when clicking the volume icon on the Windows taskbar. From there, you can choose from a variety of soundscapes, which are listed below:
- Wind Farm
- Microsoft Redmond Campus
- International Space Station
- Thunderstorm
- Productivity Soundscapes by Brian Eno
- Forest
- Rain
- Ocean Waves
Microsoft could expand the feature to include music from the community, other artists, and other environments. Of course, users can do this already by starting up Groove or Spotify, but the built-in functionality would make things much more intuitive.
Satya Nadella himself seems to be a big inspiration behind the change, Aslan quoting: “We will reinvent productivity to empower every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more.”
The enhancement of productivity via music would certainly fit with that goal, and now we just have to wait and see if Microsoft feels the same way.
The feature would add a lot more clutter to the sound interface, however, and could be an annoyance for some users. Personally, I would prefer to see it as a toggle on setting.
You can view the full concept for Microsoft Ambience on Can Aslan's Behance page. There you can also try out a small interactive demo of the product. Let us what you think of the feature and any improvements in the comments below.
