Harm van Essen

User interaction with everyday lighting systems

Abstract New lighting technologies create new opportunities that may contribute to people’s experience of light. These opportunities are a result of the increased variety and freedom in terms of colour, form factor and connectivity of the lights. To allow people to fully benefit from the potential of such novel lighting systems, there is a need for a new user interaction paradigm. To develop this paradigm, we have to better understand the aspects that play a part in the interaction with lighting, paying special attention to people’s motivation for interaction. This paper reports on a context-mapping study that was performed to gain insight in these aspects. As result, we present a set of seven themes that regard the interaction with lighting in the current situation and in the future. These themes provide an overview of the relevant aspects in this domain and contain considerations and opportunities for the design of new interfaces for novel lighting systems. We conclude that people have different levels of lighting needs that are highly dependent on context and that also require control at different levels. The context and lighting needs have a large influence on the extent to which people are motivated to adjust their lighting. Moreover, the lighting interface itself has a large effect on this motivation, mainly influenced by the degrees of freedom, the control location and availability, the degree of automation and general interaction qualities.

Design and evaluation of an ambient display to support time management during meetings

An explorative research to investigate the opportunities of using light as a communication medium to provide peripheral information is presented. An innovative ambient display, using dynamic light patterns on the walls of the meeting room to support time management during meetings has been developed. Designed according to the principles of calm technology and information decoration, the system seeks for a balance between aesthetical and informational quality. Two prototypes were created and qualitative research methods are used to evaluate the concept and the efficacy of light in conveying information. The results confirm the value of our concept by showing an appreciation of the usefulness and a good level of comprehension of the users towards the system. The project led to insightful considerations on design guidelines and recommendations for further development of ambient displays to use light to convey abstract information in a subtle, unobtrusive way.

Designing interactive lighting

LED-based lighting systems have introduced radically new possibilities in the area of artificial lighting. Being physically small the LED can be positioned or embedded into luminaires, materials and even the very fabric of a building or environment. Hundreds of LEDs can be used in a single luminaire or space, of which each could have different light output properties. The light switch therefore in many situations will need to be enhanced or fully replaced by intelligent controls and smart environments that are sensitive to the context and responsive to the people in the environment. The focus of this workshop is to explore new ways of interacting with light where lighting is no longer simply an on or off system, but a flexible system capable of creating a large range of functional, decorative and ambient light effects.

Breakout 404: A smart space implementation for lighting services in the office domain

Smart spaces provide enhanced user experience through sensing and adaptation to changing context. Hence, they allow distributed applications to show intelligent, autonomous and interactive behavior. Two important research topics within this field are machine learning and human-system interaction. This paper introduces a pilot smart space implementation on top of a Wireless Sensor and Actuator Network (WSAN) infrastructure that is specifically intended to investigate these two aspects. We investigate a scenario built around an office breakout area context. We describe the infrastructure setup, the novel user interfaces, the network architecture and the message exchange policies of the pilot implementation. We employ the opportunities of modern lighting systems in the proposed implementation.

The role of ambient intelligence in future lighting systems

LED-based lighting systems have introduced radically new possibilities in the area of artificial lighting. Being physically small the LED can be positioned or embedded into luminaires, materials and even the very fabric of a building or environment. The light switch therefore in many situations will need to be enhanced or fully replaced by intelligent controls and smart environments that are sensitive to the context and responsive to the presence of people. Future lighting systems will become a part of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI). This workshop explores how the vision and principles of the AmI paradigm can be applied to future lighting controls, where lighting is not anymore only a functional on/off system, but a flexible system capable of creating a large range of functional/decoration and ambient light effects.

Designing for Multi-User Interaction in the Home Environment: Implementing Social Translucence

Interfaces of interactive systems for domestic use are usually designed for individual interactions although these interactions influence multiple users. In order to prevent conflicts and unforeseen influences on others we propose to leverage the human ability to take each other into consideration in the interaction. A promising approach for this is found in the social translucence framework, which was originally described by Erickson & Kellogg. In this paper, we investigate how to design multi-user interfaces for domestic interactive systems through two design cases where we focus on the implementation of social translucence constructs (visibility, awareness, and accountability) in the interaction. We use the resulting designs to extract design considerations: interfaces should not prescribe behavior, need to offer sufficient interaction alternatives, and previous settings need to be retrievable. We also identify four steps that can be integrated in any design process to help designers in creating interfaces that support multi-user interaction through social translucence.

Interactive city lighting

LED based lighting systems have enabled radically new possibilities in the field of artificial lighting. This is due to in part to the LED being digitally controllable which means this efficient light source can also be integrated with sensors and smart environments. This has opened up a new world of lighting and lighting interaction opportunities that has been applied in new concepts in many of the indoor lighting domains. The outdoor lighting domain however has focused mostly on the LEDs efficiency and low cost of ownership to save energy and money for local governments. The use of the LED as a potential means for providing interactive city lighting for social good or entertainment is as yet a fairly unexplored area. This is therefore the focus of this workshop to bring together a community of researchers, designers and technologists to explore the potential of interactive city lighting and how it could support or enhance the lives of those living in a city.

A Design Approach to Decentralized Interactive Environments

We are exploring a design approach to the implementation of decentralized intelligent environments. We adopt the research through design process by creating an infrastructure of physical, interactive objects and explore the potential of a decentralized philosophy in four design iterations. Open-ended play serves as a fruitful context for design cases. Iterations of prototyping and user testing facilitate the exploration of emergence. One of the design outcomes is a simple decentralized system for soccer training which proved to be very successful on challenge and motivation, and inspired players to invent a range of games, both competitive and cooperative.

A perspective on multi-user interaction design based on an understanding of domestic lighting conflicts

Abstract More and more connected systems are entering the social and shared home environment. Interaction with these systems is often rather individual and based on personal preferences, leading to conflicts in multi-user situations. In this paper, we aim to develop a perspective on how to design for multi-user interaction with connected lighting systems, based on a better understanding of real-life interpersonal lighting conflicts. In order to understand everyday lighting conflicts, including their causes and resolution strategies, we present two studies. First, we observe real-life lighting conflicts between couples living in single-room apartments. Using probes for data gathering followed by dyadic interviews, we identify the role of agreements on use in conflicts and we identify different types of conflicts (preference, activity, and attitude conflicts). Next, we take a more disruptive approach based on technology probes, where we provoke lighting conflicts in family living rooms to observe resolution strategies. We find that people try to avoid conflicts at all costs. If there is a risk that others are negatively affected by an adjustment, people rather not interact with the system at all. Based on these insights, we defined a perspective on designing for multi-user interaction that provides the user with the confidence that interactions are socially accepted. This assurance can be given by presenting the user with information leading to awareness about the acceptance of a lighting change by the other users. We advise on what information can be visualized, based on the three conflict types we observed in the study. The combination of a deeper understanding of conflicts and a perspective on multi-user interface design can serve as a starting point to design better multi-user interfaces for domestic connected systems.

Evaluating Interface Characteristics for Shared Lighting Systems in the Office Environment

IoT developments make shared systems, such as lighting systems, increasingly connected. From an interaction perspective, this offers opportunities for personal control. Especially for lighting, the benefits of personal control have been underlined by research. However, how to design interfaces that realise these potential benefits is much less investigated. This paper presents a long-term qualitative study in which three interfaces for a shared lighting system are evaluated by 17 people working in an open plan office. The interfaces are designed to vary on a number of characteristics, including the distribution over space, interaction modality, and sequence of interaction. Based on the results, we provide new insights in the impact of interface characteristics on lighting use and experience. We find, i.a., that having an interface on a personal multi-purpose device or on a central interface solely dedicated to lighting, influences whether people make individual or more collective lighting adjustments and decisions.