Course: Design Skills – individual project
Methods: Desk Research, Sketching, Rapid Prototyping
Role:Â Lead interaction and product designer
Timeline:Â 1 week in 12/2015
Keywords: Interaction Design, Product Design, Experience Design, Social Computing, Tangible Interaction, User-Centered Design
Challenge
The challenge of this one-week design project was to use different skills in order to design an interactive lamp inspired by human behavior.
How to facilitate social interaction over a long distance through the light?
Outcome
I created connected lamps that express ambient awareness. The concept experiments with emotional expression over a long distance and sharing emotions. These networked lamps may help couples, long distance families, close friends, people in a hospital or people unable to actively communicate to create or support connectedness, awareness, belonging and togetherness.
How it works
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- Person A makes a hand gesture for sending a signal and the upper half of the lamp is turned off for a while in order to getting know if person B is close to the lamp. Person B receives a signal with a blue color on the upper half of the lamp and sends feedback by a gesture.
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- Person A receives the signal and touches the lamp because he knows that person B is on the other side. When person B touches the lamp too, the both connected lamps will blink blue.
Process
My design process started with inspiration seeking and ideation of various use of lights and its (interactive) behaviors.
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- Inspiration
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- Ideation
After generating a lot of ideas, I decided to focus on sharing emotions through interactive artifact(s).
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- Similar concepts of emotional expressions over a long distance
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- Exploration of artifact’s form and shape
Concept development (Rapid Prototyping)
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- Electronic prototyping
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- Exploring interactions
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- Exploring materials and laser cutting
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- Technical components
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- Exploring forms
In future next step, the concept would be tested and evaluated with target users. I will explore possible haptic feedback to ensure a better experience and connect the interactive artifacts via Bluetooth/Ethernet technology.
