Micro-refresh during work: examining the effects of refreshing stimuli with short-term airflow on intellectual work performance

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

As a means of improving intellectual work performance through office environment designs, this study aimed to examine the effectiveness of external refreshing stimuli during tasks, termed Micro-refresh, using airflows. Each participant performed the 45-min comparison task under both conditions, with and without airflow stimuli. In the airflow condition, 30-s airflow stimuli directed around participants’ hands were exposed every 5 min. Differences were compared among the conditions with the Concentration Time Ratio (CTR) and several subjective evaluations. Valid data from 24 participants were obtained, and as a result, the average CTR was 2.3% points higher with airflow stimuli (p < 0.05). Further analysis suggested that providing refreshing stimuli by airflow has the potential to suppress the decline in concentration, especially later in the task. These findings could contribute to proposing a promising method to improve performance, refreshing stimuli during tasks, which are different from enforcing work breaks or managing overall indoor thermal environments.