How might we design an experience that enables students to maintain physical distancing in shared spaces?

PROJECT DURATION

3 Months

MY ROLE

Researcher

Designer

Project Manager

TEAM

Tamara Lottering

Tashfeen Ahmed

Chloe Lei

TOOLS & METHODOLOGY

Survey

Secondary Research

Product Design

Rhino 3D

Arduino Nano IoT

THE PROBLEM

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed people’s daily lives in various ways. Physical distancing is a preventative measure taken to control the spread of coronavirus. By understanding crowd psychology in study spaces and students’ perception of colours, we worked on a contemporary design that can help reduce the spread of coronavirus in shared spaces.

The expressive light lamp is designed for shared student spaces where it is likely that people will struggle to keep a safe physical distance from one another. Indoor spaces can be an ideal environment for viruses to spread, and this is only worsened when the room is a shared identity space.

This project was designed and developed as part of a group project for the Design Informatics programme at the University of Edinburgh.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

Our aim was to design a lamp that promotes physical distancing in shared spaces and that uses sensing technology and colour theory.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

We conducted an informal survey to understand how students perceive colours. This survey was designed with aspects of colour theory in mind.

 

IDEA GENERATION

For design inspiration, we looked at smart lamp designs and considered other products that could be re-designed into a lamp.

 

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

Our aim was to design a physical distancing lamp that incorporates a balance of interior design in a study space and sensing technology.

  1. We designed various 3D renderings of an expressive lamp using Rhino 3D autocad software.

  2. We then 3D-printed the model using a 3D printer.

  3. We built the lighting system using Arduino Nano IoT 33 and other sensors.

3D Models of different expressive lamps

 

Various prototypes of the expressive lamp

 

PROTOTYPING WITH ARDUINO

Lighting system is built using Arduino Nano IoT 33 & other sensors

FINAL DESIGN

The final design was non-authoritative, non-invasive, subtle, and made students aware of their physical distance from others.

Different colours of the lamp indicate different states:

  • White : Normal State

  • Magenta : Little Disturbance

  • Red : Warning State

 

Different states of the expressive lamp

 

REFLECTION

A limitation of the expressive lamp design is that people may habituate to the lamp over time, and fail to register its colour changes. Furthermore, people could choose to sit at tables where there are no lamps, therefore avoiding being tracked and possibly increasing the risk of spreading the virus.

 

Expressive lamp used in context