Missing those routine office noises while working from home under a coronavirus lockdown order? Thanks to an online voice generator it is now possible for anyone to listen to common office sounds wherever they are. Although there has been many digital solutions to help cope with the COVID-19 outbreak in recent weeks, this is one of the more thoughtful ones.
As governments have been pushed to enforce strict lockdown orders, millions are now working from home. In turn, this has created a surge in usage for a number of productivity and communication apps, including Slack, Skype and Microsoft Teams. While these apps certainly help maintain workflow, they don't necessarily ensure productivity as employees used to working in a team might not feel the same when working from home. Whatever the misgivings of a modern corporate office space may be, it still provides a feeling that you are not alone, keeping one focused on the task at hand. Furthermore, working from home can simply be lonely, and prolonged isolation can become a huge challenge for some. In spite of this, there are still fewer tech tools to help deal with the issue.
This is what makes I Miss The Office a unique solution to a specific problem. Designed by Kids, an agency based in Berlin, I Miss The Office is a simple website displaying a 3D graphical layout of a modern office along with some moving shapes to represent people. Best of all, it is a free tool with no sign-up required and, as the designers put it, it is meant to help users increase focus while working from home.
Add Office Sounds To Your Home
The experience begins as soon as the user open the website. By clicking the play button (bottom-left corner), the noise loop starts with vague office chatter and the incessant mouse clicks along with the steady, constant whirl of the air-conditioners in the background. This is followed by other common sounds like loud footsteps, strokes on a keyboard, the occasional phone ringing, and so on. Users can also click on different parts of the layout for specific noises, including a copier, coffee-maker, or water dispenser. Noises range from something as subtle as a sigh to something as annoying as the creak of a couch when someone sits and shuffles on it. Users even have the option to increase the number of people in the office and produce the soundscape of a larger working environment.
If lockdown orders extend for a longer period of time then people missing the standard office environment might have to do whatever they can to recreate those feelings at home, and I Miss The Office is likely to help. Furthermore, considering there are now predictions that more people are likely to work from after the coronavirus outbreak has been contained, these tools might become even more useful in the future.
Source: I Miss The Office