+ Tame Your Multitasking

Multitasking is impossible to escape in today’s world. As humans, we’ve always had the desire to stay connected to the people around us. Now that technology has made this easier than ever, we’ve developed a fear of urgency that any given phone call, email, or text might be really important. Multitasking is necessary, but it can be dangerous in some situations. Texting while driving is the number one distraction for new drivers, but it would also be difficult to restrict all phone use in a car. While we’re stuck with this desire to be connected, we think we can tame our multitasking.

Tame is a concept that sets a status message synced with all of your devices and applications. If you’re driving or need some privacy, you can tell Tame to handle auto-responses to your phone, IM, text, Facebook, and more. You can store messages on each face, and when you need to change your status, just rotate the cube to the desired face. Besides a written message, Tame uses a red-yellow-green color coding system to let people know at a glance if they can contact you.

An away message in Instant Messenger is useless to a person who is making contact via mobile phone. Tame delivers convergence of all these services, ensuring that someone trying to contact you will know your status regardless of the method.

Currently, multitasking requires people to manage multiple devices and applications indepedently. An away message in Instant Messenger is useless to a person who is making contact via mobile phone. Tame delivers convergence of all these services, ensuring that someone trying to contact you will know your status regardless of the method. Online software allows the user to customize their status messages from anywhere they have internet access, and Tame updates live via Bluetooth. Most importantly, the Tame interface is buttonless. To safely switch your status to “driving,” simply spin the cube to the right face.

Multitasking is an important part of our personal and professional lives, but sometimes you need to focus. Tame lets you concentrate on work when you need to, without giving up the peace of mind that you will still be able to receive a call if it is urgent. Tame doesn’t screen any incoming calls, so you can still answer any message if you choose.

Tame offers an alternative to the current method where all messages are of equal importance and difficult to screen. We see both the benefits and drawbacks to multitasking, and aim to create a dialogue on how to be both safe and efficient with it.