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Presence Indicators

Microsoft

The problem with open-plan focus

Open-plan studios are good for collaboration and bad for deep work. There’s no shared signal for “heads-down right now”: headphones depend on a colleague’s judgement, and a calendar block is invisible to anyone walking past.

As part of the broader DesignOps programme for D3 Studio at Microsoft’s Developer Division, we wanted something ambient, non-digital, and zero-effort to operate. A secondary motivation: in a division full of engineers, a fleet of custom circuit boards across the studio floor quietly made the point that designers build things too.

I scoped and oversaw the project; Lee Murray, one of my direct reports on the team, took it from concept to a fabricated fleet.

A presence indicator held aloft by a LEGO dragon minifigure on a desk in the D3 Studio open-plan office, LEDs glowing red. Image by Lee Murray.
A presence indicator held aloft by a LEGO dragon minifigure on a desk in the D3 Studio open-plan office, LEDs glowing red. Image by Lee Murray.

The hardware

Lee designs circuits as fluently as he designs interfaces. He drew the custom PCBs, had them manufactured by DirtyPCBs, and assembled the fleet in-house. The boards keep exposed electronics to a minimum and integrate graphics and instructions directly onto the PCB itself, using solder mask colour, silkscreen printing, and the board outline as the finishing materials.

Each device pairs a custom PCB with an Adafruit Huzzah32 Feather running on Arduino / ESP32, leaning on off-the-shelf hardware to keep the build reproducible. The input and output circuits connect via 3.5mm audio cables, so the units are modular. The input face carries a yeti mascot: touch it to pick a focus duration, with LED indicators at 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes. Enclosures are optional; the boards work bare.

Close-up of a presence indicator PCB showing the yeti mascot design and red LEDs lit at the 15 and 30 minute positions. Image by Lee Murray.
Close-up of a presence indicator PCB showing the yeti mascot design and red LEDs lit at the 15 and 30 minute positions. Image by Lee Murray.

Devices optionally connect to the internet, broadcasting state to a central Azure Function. Any product can consume the feed; the Vegas ambient display used it to pull real-time desk-level presence into its building-wide panels with no active input from the team.

A Python configuration tool let each team member set WiFi credentials, choose the colour of their Do Not Disturb LED, and tune the timer indicator brightness.

The Presence Configuration Tool showing WiFi settings, a status colour picker, and API code fields. Image by Lee Murray.
The Presence Configuration Tool showing WiFi settings, a status colour picker, and API code fields. Image by Lee Murray.

Distributed at scale

The project ran to a full production batch. Dozens of units were individually packaged and distributed across the D3 Studio team, enough to make the floor genuinely instrumented rather than a one-desk prototype.

A pile of individually packaged presence indicator PCBs in foil bags, ready for distribution to the D3 Studio team. Image by Lee Murray.
A pile of individually packaged presence indicator PCBs in foil bags, ready for distribution to the D3 Studio team. Image by Lee Murray.

End of the project

The indicators ran through late 2019 and into early 2020. When Microsoft moved to remote-first working in February 2020, the premise of an open-plan desk indicator vanished overnight. With no reliable in-office schedule, the project wound down with the office.

Microsoft

Collaborators

Lee Murray

Microsoft