Multi-Sensory Lamp
Introduction
Nowadays, stress comes from everywhere. Due to COVID-19, people’s stress has reached a peak. So stress management needs to penetrate our daily life to keep our mental health. A lamp is an everyday object that everyone needs to use, and plants have healing powers most people also have them in their homes so I choose the lamp and plants as a carrier. The light emanating from this table lamp creates a soothing atmosphere and builds a medium for users (age: 18 ~ 33) to self-regulate in moments of stress, anxiety, or exertion.
My initial research on plants started from PlantMax, my undergraduate thesis in 2021. The healing lighting design was inspired and first explored in the BIO-NANA project.
Self-Driven Research Project
Sponsor
2022-2023 RISD Industrial Design Health Fund
My Skills
Plant research & experiment
Rendering
Tangible prototype making
Light design
Electronic design (Arduino)
Publication
IDSA International Design Conference & Education Symposium
Identify Users
18-33 years old
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), those people aged 18-33 years old suffer the highest levels of stress in the nation, In an assessment measuring stress, the millennial generation scored a 5.4 (on a scale of 1 to 10), compared to the national average of 4.9.
66% of American households own at least one houseplant
Since 2019 there has been a steady increase in plant ownership among American consumers. Statistics about indoor plants show that 66% of Americans own at least one houseplant in their homes. Also, the number of consumers with no interest in owning a houseplant has decreased to 26%.
Reference: Statista. 2021. Indoor houseplant gardening participation in the United States from 2010 to 2019.
Design Concept
Darkness is the world's original natural environment, since the birth of mankind, people have been trying to create light, from the most primitive beginnings to the most sophisticated technology, the lamps of each era, a sign of the development of social productivity, is the crystallization of the combination of art and science and technology, they drive away from the darkness where there is no sun and give us sunlight.
Usually, lamps are lifeless, and people often interact with cold industrial products. In this society full of pressure and competition, I want to look for some warm designs that let people interact with products full of life rather than industrial machines.
The Multi-Sensory Lamp For Emotion Regulation project explores how a living material (plants) can be an interface to interact with light and create a curative immersive environment.
Framework of Interaction
This table lamp has two ways for people to interact with plants: to turn on/off the light as well as to switch the color of the light - different lights create different atmospheres for people in different states.
In addition, a HR sensor is installed on the back of the desk lamp, and the HR sensor is installed at a position where a person can just hug the lamp. When the person's heart rate was higher than normal, the lamp would shine a pulsing light, almost as if it were breathing.
Plant Interface Experiments
Leaf 1
Leaf 2
Leaf 3
Leaf 4*
Leaf 4*
Empty
Leaf 1 + Leaf 2
Leaf 2 + Leaf 3
The plant I used has four leaves. However, only three blades are used as capacitance sensors. As you can see, the pictures on the left have three colors. It can be concluded from the first picture that when one blade is touched (the three acting as capacitive sensors), although all the values will increase, the values of the touched blade will be significantly higher than the others. When touching the blade with no capacitive sensing attached, all the values increased compared to the quiet condition, and the values of the two capacitive sensors close to the blade were nearly equal.
The second picture is the data change when two blades are touched at the same time. Changes can be faintly seen in the image, but further noise processing and more experiments are needed.