Serge Offermans

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.

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.

Moving Tangible Interaction Systems to the Next Level

Understanding tangible interactions foundational concepts can lead to systems with direct, integrated, and meaningful data control and representation.

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.

An analysis of input-output relations in interaction with smart tangible objects

This article focuses on the conceptual relation between the users input and a systems output in interaction with smart tangible objects. Understanding this input-output relation (IO relation) is a prerequisite for the design of meaningful interaction. A meaningful IO relation allows the user to know what to do with a system to achieve a certain goal and to evaluate the outcome. The work discussed in this article followed a design research process in which four concepts were developed and prototyped. An evaluation was performed using these prototypes to investigate the effect of highly different IO relations on the users understanding of the interaction. The evaluation revealed two types of IO relations differing in functionality and the number of mappings between the user and system actions. These two types of relations are described by two IO models that provide an overview of these mappings. Furthermore, they illustrate the role of the user and the influence of the system in the process of understanding the interaction. The analysis of the two types of IO models illustrates the value of understanding IO relations for the design of smart tangible objects.

User interaction techniques for 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. Together with new functionality and flexibility comes complexity; the simple light switch is not anymore sufficient to control our light. This workshop explores new ways of interacting with light. The goal is to define directions for new forms of user interaction that will be able to support the emerging LED-based lighting systems.

The Role of Ambient Intelligence in Future Lighting Systems - Summary of the Workshop

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 could also 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. Future lighting systems will become a part of the Ambient Intelligence (AmI). In this workshop, we explored how the vision and principles of the AmI paradigm can be applied to future lighting systems that are capable of creating a large range of functional, decorative, and ambient light effects. This paper summarizes the workshop paper contributions and the outcome of our discussion on the key design and research challenges for the field of Interactive Ambient Lighting systems.