Lightly: Remote Collaboration through Light
Group Project:
Robbie Li
For Lightly, I designed and built a full-scale prototype of a conferencing-connected mechatronic lamp. I learned how to use the ESP8266 and send information over Wifi. Alongside my teammates, I also researched effective psychological (ultimately lighting) cues, planned a user experience, and interviewed a sample user group. We sought to answer the question:
How can we better connect remote coworkers?
Lightly is a lighting system that creates the same atmosphere for co-workers in different locations and time zones. Through syncopated changes in lighting cues, they collectively move through different meeting modes, together.
Lightly compensates for lost social cues with lighting cues.
For the physical intervention, I used a stepper-motor based linear actuator to control a series of strings that tension in sequence to create the delayed opening effect.
