As I am wrapping up my homework from yet another week of academic rigor, I can’t help but wish that my environment reflected my feelings of accomplishment and ‘reward’ me for all I have achieved in this past week.

I almost always use Google Keep to keep track of the tasks that I need to complete in a given amount of time. Whenever I complete a task, I find myself opening the app to strike out that particular task. The feeling that I experience by striking out tasks and getting to end of my to do list gives me a sensation of pseudo bliss – I suppose it’s caused by the release of dopamine. To mirror these feelings, and to display information which has hitherto been contained inside fancy apps, I propose the idea of a To-Do Light.

In my mind, this is a light which connects to your smartphone and syncs with your preferred To Do List app – Google Keep, Evernote etc. Once synced, the light, connected to a power outlet may glow a deep shade of red to indicate a long list of tasks which needs to be tackled. The red light becomes a metaphor for work that needs to be done by the user. I think red makes for an appropriate color in this scenario since it generally commands attention, and for a lot of people, it also symbolizes urgency. As the user completes tasks and checks off those items off his/her list, the color of the light changes to mild hue of yellow/saffron to indicate work being done. Once the user completes his final task, the light changes to a bright white to symbolize bliss and happiness.

In many ways, the colour of the light at any stage of the user’s to do list becomes a metaphor for what many people strapped for time feel inside of them. To make the light transition to different, milder colors seems only reasonable to do in order to realize the user’s digital strikethroughs in the real world.