This doesn't work on me. Even with the volume down low, I couldn't help trying to listen to the coffee shop conversations the instant it started playing. All the voices were somewhere in front of me in space, and after a few seconds I felt pretty overwhelmed. Completely lost my ability to focus on anything else, unfortunately.
This could be due to the fact I get sensory overload easily (and I'm somewhere on the broad autism phenotype). It was a jarring experience.
Plus the coffee shops I frequent are usually quieter than that - that sounded more like a busy canteen than a coffee shop to me! Needed less echo, more muffling, less voices, and some ambient background coffeeshop music, in my humble opinion of small-coffee-shop patron-hipster :)
If I want to focus on stuff, often I have to completely block out people talking and ambient noise and stick music on. The best kind of music is lyricless (or at least, no coherent words - Sigur Røs' english-icelandic gibberish mix is a good example of that), usually long movements, lots of prolonged chords and repetitive segments and a steady rhythm. That stuff helps with my sequencing ability and I find I flit between tasks less.
I've also tried white noise / "binaural beats" (those audio signals that use gentle modulation to supposedly alter your brainwaves), but those are pretty overwhelming too.
I do wonder if it would have a better on me had they used binaural recording (two microphones where the ears would be on a fake head, plus some algorithms to create a 3-dimensional sense of space from the signals) - which to me sounds more natural.
I can't read the whole paper on this, but I'm wondering if they took account of the spectrum of different neurotypes when studying this "coffee shop creativity" effect?
Also, since I've seen other people doing it, here's the artists/bands I listen to like 24/7 when in work to help me concentrate:
Godspeed You! Black Emperor (favourite <3),
Set Fire To Flames,
Explosions In The Sky,
Lovett's "Ghost of Old Highways" album,
Sigur Røs,
Ludovico Einaudi,
Philip Glass,
Massive Attack,
Portishead,
Liquid Stranger,
Radiohead,
DJ Shadow,
RJD2,
Kid Koala,
Hybrid,
Deadmau5,
Hans Zimmer soundtracks,
Nine Inch Nails' "Ghosts I-IV",
65daysofstatic (some stuff anyway, some of their stuff is crazy loud and overwhelming)
I disagree, I think it looks a lot different to directgov. It's a helluva lot cleaner - every page on directgov is a mass of links to other places, whereas this one focuses much more on the content. The design is also responsive, which is nice (directgov definitely isn't responsive) - it'll look nice on mobile devices. The floating 'relevant links' thing is a nice touch too.
I don't get why the default font for the size is so huge though, they ought to make it smaller a couple of points.
wow, very impressive! I look forward to using it :) I have a couple of webapps that need frontends, so definitely giving this a whirl when it's released.
This could be due to the fact I get sensory overload easily (and I'm somewhere on the broad autism phenotype). It was a jarring experience.
Plus the coffee shops I frequent are usually quieter than that - that sounded more like a busy canteen than a coffee shop to me! Needed less echo, more muffling, less voices, and some ambient background coffeeshop music, in my humble opinion of small-coffee-shop patron-hipster :)
If I want to focus on stuff, often I have to completely block out people talking and ambient noise and stick music on. The best kind of music is lyricless (or at least, no coherent words - Sigur Røs' english-icelandic gibberish mix is a good example of that), usually long movements, lots of prolonged chords and repetitive segments and a steady rhythm. That stuff helps with my sequencing ability and I find I flit between tasks less.
I've also tried white noise / "binaural beats" (those audio signals that use gentle modulation to supposedly alter your brainwaves), but those are pretty overwhelming too.
I do wonder if it would have a better on me had they used binaural recording (two microphones where the ears would be on a fake head, plus some algorithms to create a 3-dimensional sense of space from the signals) - which to me sounds more natural.
I can't read the whole paper on this, but I'm wondering if they took account of the spectrum of different neurotypes when studying this "coffee shop creativity" effect?
Also, since I've seen other people doing it, here's the artists/bands I listen to like 24/7 when in work to help me concentrate: Godspeed You! Black Emperor (favourite <3), Set Fire To Flames, Explosions In The Sky, Lovett's "Ghost of Old Highways" album, Sigur Røs, Ludovico Einaudi, Philip Glass, Massive Attack, Portishead, Liquid Stranger, Radiohead, DJ Shadow, RJD2, Kid Koala, Hybrid, Deadmau5, Hans Zimmer soundtracks, Nine Inch Nails' "Ghosts I-IV", 65daysofstatic (some stuff anyway, some of their stuff is crazy loud and overwhelming)