LUMI Lamp to

communicate task status

with office workers

Interactive Technology Design (group work) 2011.02-2011.06

Interaction Design for Generation Y in offce environment
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 offce 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 offce environment. It allows the offce workers to check up on deadlines with their colleagues in an
interactive way. When an employee wants to know whether a colleague is fnished 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 (confrming,
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.
Confrming 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
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.
Actuators
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.
The video of LUMI prototype can be checked online: http://v.youku.
com/v_show/id_XNTAyMzcxMTIw.html