Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow

by Dominica Degrandis

Unfortunately, unlike the visual transparency of physical labor, knowledge work takes place in the cerebral cortex of the brain, where thoughts are the result of signals passing through neurons on their way to the nervous system. Tucked away out of sight of coworkers, teammates, and the boss, our ideas for how to solve problems and design systems remain invisible to the rest of the world. How fantastic would it be if we could physically display all the intense mental labor that goes into creative problem-solving or conceptualizing new ideas with the click of a mouse or stroke of a dry erase pen (“See, boss, I really am working!”)? While it may not be quite that easy, it is possible to achieve visibility of work in the technology sector by making those ideas, the state of the knowledge work, and the related problems visually accessible to ourselves and to those impacted.