Coping at home…

— A small history of home officing during the spring of 2020

By Kjell Are Refsvik, Department of Design at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Foreword

Writing this, is both part of a test of the tool “Research Catalog”, and also a way of trying to capture and convey some informal reflections about a very special spring.

— Kjell Are Refsvik, June 2020

March

Taking in the new situation and starting ad-hoc home officing

Home office: Photo: Kjell Are Refsvik, 2020

The situation is OK at the beginning. My wife, my youngest son (18) and I have all shared an home office for a number of year. Due to the fact that the room rarely has more than one person, this has worked out fine. But we quickly realise that 3 video meetings at the same time makes it very hard to consentrate. I realise that I need to move out.

After a few days of preparations online in a common share space online, I run off a saturday before easter to help the talented collegues at the Department of Manufacturing and Civil Engineering to help produce face masks for the local hospital. This [Gemini article](http://gemini.no/2020/03/ntnu-3d-printer-forbedret-smittevernutstyr-til-sykehus/) tells the story. A quick visit to the office also confirms my suspicience. My plant life has perished during the first stage of the isolation.

Moving out to solve the situation but creating other challenges

I choose the kitchen as my office when moving out of out common home office, but quickly realise that that comes with its challenges too, as family members making lunch and coffee interrupts my video calls. This goes on for a number of weeks, but is not a sustainable situation. A different solution is needed as we realise that we probably will be in this situation until the summer.

Time-out — easter

Luckily, I have time to ponder a solution, as the easter holiday arrives. Finally, a week of rest and recreation before the challenging home office situation continues.

I also have time to test out some new tech just arriving from China — an airborne particle detector.

April

Our youngest son gets the TV room as his office, and continues home schooling there, while me and my wife starts a re-decoration plan for our home office. Cleaning it down, fixing blemishes and gives the room new office tables, more plants, better light and better and more storage. After 3 trips to IKEA, and 3 weeks worth of evenings and weekends, the office re-appears in a better form. That includes microphone stands, a trip to the office to pick up a chair, a monitor and some computer paraphernalia. In total, NOK10K is invested in a vastly better home office situation.

I even find the time to have some fun with my wife that gets some highly suspicious nametags on her behind-the-webcam drawers, and I also create a sign we can use to signal each other during meetings.

Going shopping for new solutions…

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Focusing all attention on students and trying to solve their needs…

New work/life routines — Walking to work — eating out lunch

A very broad toolset. Using 6 platforms to do videochats…

A new office under way — for me and the others…

Searching for points of improvements with LEAN thinking…

I completely fall for the LEAN way of thinking after looking at FastCaps video on YouTube, and go searching for things to increase productivity, efficiency and overall tidyness. My wall of indoor tools and office supplies, batteries and daily stuff comes out as a result.

Our toolbox for doing online communication

Have been using 6 tools throughout (email, webex, hangout, skype, sfb, teams, facetime). Rune covers this in his article

Making guidelines and artifacts to cope in an home office landscape…

Giving birth to a new term

LMU meeting and stating that Blackboard has some of the same attributes as a bomb shelter and that we need a solution to create a digital base room for our students from the fall, where hanging out and fascilitating different and more modern forms of two-way communication is easier.

May

Visiting the new design workshop for input on details…

The process does not stop, and the building of our new design factory needs input from the builders. The trip provides hope and wonder

Harvesting stuff from work and keeping fine-adjusting

Going to get a chair a screen and
Reminissing about what is was like to have students on campus

Prepping for the fall by testing a home-recording situation

Adding my dslr camera to the mix
…

New painpoints — muscles, body fat and eye-sight

Going to get glasses
Walking to work

Preparing new learning resources for the fall

Template
Prototyping-kit
Resarch Catalogue

June

Colophon

This page was produced using Research Catalogue (researchcatalogue.net) as part of a test of the tool in the spring of 2020. We are evaluating the tool to be used among our student for reflection and documentation — much like this mage. While the graphical interface where users can design their own free form page by placing objects anywhere, the text-based tool using the markup language “markup” and css, seems a better choice for the Design department in Gjøvik. Using the text-based entry tool to create an exposition in Research Catalogue, I was able to finish this page in an evening without much problem, and seem to have control over the visualization using a css.

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Kjell Are Refsvik - Coping at home2 — A history of home officing in the spring of 2020 - 2021