Productivity Lamp
Course: Prototyping for Experience Design
Prompt: Gather ambient or active (or both) data to design an experience that heightens awareness of time and/or space.
Description: I am someone who often struggles with staying focused when sitting at my desk for long periods of time, so I wanted to design something that would encourage and motivate me to stay on task when doing work.
I came up with the idea to create a lamp that changes color the longer you work, in order to promote productivity.
Sketching
I knew I wanted to create some sort of lamp that would bring the user awareness to how much time they were spending staying focused, so I began ideating different containers that I could present the lamp in. Once I narrowed it down to a book, I was able to determine what type of circuit I could use, which in this case was an LED that changes colors according to the time.
I then determined the components of my container, considering how the sensor and electronic components would fit into it.
Building
I created a laser cutting file for my container, with the main cover being cut from MDF and the pages from clear acrylic
This is my circuit plan, using a PIR motion sensor, an RGB LED light, an an Arduino board.
The code I used for this circuit. The motion sensor works with the LED light to change color based on the amount of time the user spends sitting in front of the sensor. For testing purposes, I used shorter time intervals.
Testing
I tested the circuit on a bread board before placing it into my final container
