Interactive Technology Design (group work) 2011.02-2011.06
Interaction Design for Generation Y in office environment
“LUMI Lamp to
communicate task status with office workers�
There are growing Generation Y (born between 1978 and 1994) in the working environment. They grew up with hi-tech equipment, such as mobile phones and wireless Internet in their private domains. However, in the office environment the rich interactions offered by hi-tech equipment are not supported. To improve the situation, the group explores how new interaction products can stimulate new ways of working and creates the LUMI lamp prototype to communicate task status with experiential and inspirational tangible interaction.
“LUMI Lamp to communicate task status with office workers�
Concept description
The LUMI is a communication device for an office environment. It allows the office workers to check up on deadlines with their colleagues in an interactive way. When an employee wants to know whether a colleague is finished with a task or deadline, he can select the name of the targeted colleague on LUMI and start the interaction. The colleague working on the task will get a signal and can respond in different ways (confirming, postponing and rejecting) to notify how far the task has progressed so far. The scenario below illustrates the interactions between user and LUMI.
“LUMI Lamp to communicate task status with office workers”
Prototype development
For the LUMI prototype, the team chooses to implement an Arduino Mega board with an ATmega1280 chip. The code which controls the whole prototype is written in the Arduino IDE. All the code has been written by the programmers of the team from the ground up, while implementing some existing Arduino libraries called MsTimer2 and Servo. Sensors For each of the three response interactions the team implements a different sensor to register the interaction of the user. Confirming the request (Action: tapping on the head of LUMI): a shock sensor. This shock sensor is also attached to a calibrating circuit which allows setting the sensitivity of the sensor. Postponing the request (Action: pushing the lamp to turn it away from the user): a potentiometer. When the lamp swivels, the potentiometer turns. Rejecting the request (Action: grabbing and shaking the head of the LUMI to say “no”): a tilt switch. It is placed inside of the head of the LUMI.
“LUMI Lamp to communicate task status with office workers� The video of LUMI prototype can be checked online: http://v.youku. com/v_show/id_XNTAyMzcxMTIw.html
Actuators Two actuators are used in our prototype. High Power (3W) RGB LED is used in the head of LUMI to implement colour feedback. High Torque digital Winch Servo is implemented to give LUMI the chance to lift its head and shine a light in the face of the user to grab his attention after a request is received from a colleague.
Flash demonstration To be able to give an effective presentation of the concept without two working LUMI, the group creates a second LUMI in Adobe Flash and let it communicate to the real prototype via TinkerProxy and USB. Then two sides of the interaction/communication can be demonstrated without building two entire prototypes.