I have managed to mangle my wrists so much over the years that I now almost exclusively use my computer with voice and an eye tracker.
I will never work in an office again, unless the company I work for wants to pay for me to have a private office with a door that closes, and pay to duplicate my home set up (~£1000+).
Even then:
- it just seems moronic for me to spend my own free time on commuting. So I would also want my company to pay for that, both in transport fees and in my time.
- it's very inconvenient to have to bring a packaged lunch to work, or wasteful to buy one every day.
- I can control my own temperature, my own noise levels, and take breaks when I feel my performance lagging, not when it's socially appropriate to do so
I think it's totally fine to come to an office occasionally to collaborate or celebrate, but doing it every day or even once a week is valueless
RSI? Would like to hear more about your home set-up
My setup, software:
- talon (https://talonvoice.com/), basing my configuration on the standard repo (https://github.com/knausj85/knausj_talon/), with some minor modifications. This is how I navigate my whole computer, and runs the voice recognition and eye tracking. This is how I'm typing this right now. There are also a bunch of other little system changes that you need to make (eg, on macOS, disable double space to type a period), which is documented by the community with varying levels of success.
- cursorless (https://www.cursorless.org/), and then vscode. Before this I used Sublime Text for years and years, but cursorless is too good for coding. I know there are some projects on going to port it to different editors, but I haven't massively looked into it.
- vimium extension for web browsing (works in both chrome and firefox). This makes things like clicking links easier with your voice, without having too use an eye tracker all the time.
And then hardware:
- DPA 4488 microphone -> DAD6001 microdot-XLR converter -> Shure X2U USB XLR interface. ~£800. It's a very expensive microphone, but it's what the developer of talon uses (same brand anyway), and since I'm using this for work I want to remove every obstacle to having my voice recognised correctly and quickly
- Tobii Eye Tracker 5. ~£250. This is basically the only game in town. It works well enough but needs a lot of light. It also needs to be physically mounted to a monitor. In theory this means I don't need to use a mouse, but because I have a 34" ultrawide it doesn't work well on the edges, so I have a specific window size and location configured (say "layout mouse") which I could move apps into if I need to.
- At some point soon I want to replace the X2U with something higher quality and more permanent on my desk. Soon!