Tomato Dice: A Multimodal Device to Encourage Breaks During Work

The COVID pandemic has resulted in many people working from home, blurring lines between work and personal time. In response, the Tomato Dice, a multimodal device, attempts to provide a fun way for people to take more effective breaks amid work through timeboxing. After the dice is rolled, each side plays visual and audio feedback helping users to either work for a set amount of time or take a break away from their work screens. In this paper, we discussed the design process and the different modes of the dice. We also conducted a heuristic evaluation followed by a usability study which revealed that participants were mostly fascinated with the dice and were more likely to use the Tomato Dice to relax than to take breaks.