Rendering of a complete Orion system
Exploded view of portable luminaire prototype
Wireless charging and docking interface
Demonstration of wirelessly choosing presets with Orion system controls
Opportunity Validation
Sep — Dec 2021
Although our team started out by identifying almost 100 whitespace ideas using the methodical problem-finding tools our professors instilled in us, the one that inspired Orion was more of a chance encounter:
Our teammate Khizr was with a group of friends that wanted to play a board game. The lounge they were in was a large 20x10’ room and had one overhead light on one side, one floor lamp in the opposite corner, and color-LED strips along the ceiling.
Turning the overhead light on made the room too bright and “ugly”, only the floor lamp made some corners too dark, and the LEDs didn’t provide any light on the table:
They couldn’t find the correct balance of light sources to set the mood for the game.
They couldn’t find the correct balance of light sources to set the mood for the game.
Initial lighting experience journey map
This experience, journey-mapped above, kicked-off our exploration into the indoor lighting space for our white-space capstone project. Over the next three months we:
1. Surveyed 33 Northwestern students, on and off-campus, regarding their satisfaction with their current lighting setups for the variety of activities they do in their lounges (2/3 indicated a desire for improvement in their lighting)
2. Researched lighting literature, benchmarked products on the market, and interviewed potential stakeholders, including lighting designers, interior designers, and realtors
3. Conducted a deep-dive user observation study to quantify 12 temporary-living residents’ lighting levels and record their lighting setups by studying their apartments, creating heat maps and discovering guiding statistics for our validation
From this validation process, the core pain points uncovered were:
1. Current lighting products cannot easily adapt to create users intended moods for different activities
2. The system for creating adaptability—by buying and powering multiple products—is too complicated
Which ultimately led to our problem statement:
How might we simplify the way in which short-term residents illuminate their living spaces for a variety of moods and activities?
Design of Experiments + Ideation
Jan - Mar 2022
Target Demographic
After understanding our target user and problem space, the next step was to scope user behavior and the competitive landscape. To do so, we created a design-of-experiments style procedure to inform tangible and quantifiable requirements for our product.
Experiment Overview
In a model apartment with no pre-installed lighting, 12 users were given a variety of lighting products and were asked to create their ideal lighting setups for 3 activities:
1. Hanging out with friends
2. Pre-gaming
3. Playing a board game
Experiment Goals
1. Discover lighting preferences of short-term residents
2. Identify lighting trends
3. Correlate moods to specific lighting setups
Experiment Procedure
1. Fill out pre-test form
2. Create ideal lighting setups for 3 given activities
3. Fill out post-test form
Luminaires available for users
Quantifying Mood
How can you measure something as subjective as mood? To correlate mood to specific activities and setups, we first had to figure out a way to reliably quantify mood. To do so, we employed the Russell Affect grid, which suggests that all moods exist as a combination of satisfaction (x-axis) and arousal (y-axis).
Heat Maps
The participants’ lighting setups were documented, and using a lux-meter we measured the illuminance levels across the lounge, standardized to a 5x7 grid. These levels were translated to a log2(lux) to help visualize setups and identify trends across activities and moods.
The diversity of lighting setups and illuminance levels is apparent within the activities, but also individual participants’ setups across different activities; our solution must be adaptable to users individualized preferences.
The primary trend that was apparent was the majority of the participants’ tendency to create overhead ambient lighting across their setups. This was done primarily with the two available floor lamps, which 70% of the setups included.
Key Insights
1. Participants created overhead ambient light in the majority of setups, with 70% using floor lamps
2. The average and median of 4 luminaires were used across all setups
3. Cognitive lux requirements correlated with that of the IES lighting handbook
Keeping in mind these data and observations, we compiled a list of user needs:
Ideation
With user needs clearly identified, we moved on to brainstorming potential solutions. Of the many ideas, 3 were selected for further development, and 2 were prototyped for user testing.
Sample of solutions from initial brainstorming
Semi-finalists
The two designs selected for prototyping were the “canopy” and the “docking system”. The canopy is a tension cable system running across a ceiling, allowing users to place luminaires anywhere on the canopy to suit their evolving needs. The docking system is a torchiere lamp with smaller portable lamps that can be placed elsewhere and returned to the docks to charge.
The prototypes were set up in a Northwestern classroom, and 12 students were invited to use them, provide their thoughts on the function and usability of the concepts, and provide their preferences between the two.
9/12 participants preferred the docking system to the canopy, with the former receiving comments such as:
“This is so sick oh my goodness. Oh wow!”
“It’s so cool!”
“This radiates positive vibes”
Canopy prototype + various luminaire proponents (left) and torchiere docking prototype + portable luminaire close-up (right) in the classroom used for user testing
Portable Luminaire Design
Following the successful reception of the docking system, we spent the next few weeks on the design of the portable luminaire—the battery-powered light that users would pick up from the dock and move around their living space. After hundreds of sketches, functional prototypes, and three rounds of iterative user testing, we found that our original “globe” design spoke to the majority of users. It is simple, elegant, and neutral enough to fit into a variety of interior styles, making the product more accessible to our target audience.
I want to take a moment to spotlight two designs that I spent considerable effort on, but which we ultimately eliminated. The biggest advantage they had over the "globe" was their ability to adjust light direction. The first design, dubbed the Green Bean, achieved this by employing a folding fan-inspired mechanism to disperse light in varying intensities/directions. As demonstrated by the animation below, rotating the lamp shade allows the user to switch between diffused, ambient lighting and concentrated, task lighting. The Green Bean had 3 iterations. V0 was a proof-of-concept, hot glue + popsicle stick version to test the viability of the moving parts in conjunction with the electronics. V1 was the first CAD/3D printed version, and V2 improved upon V1 regarding indicators and affordances (experimenting with shape/texture to encourage users to pick up and rotate the luminaire).
V0
V1 shade
V1 mechatronics
V1 mechatronics testing
Demonstration of rotating mechanism
V2 shade
V2 mechanism
The second prototype explored passive functionality. The goal of this design was to create a luminaire shade that had no moving mechanisms (unlike Green Bean), but could still be reoriented to provide different types of light as shown in the pictures below (from left to right: face down—accent, sideways—directional, upward—ambient, downward—accent/task). This prismatic shape was a product of pure "form follows function".
Orion Prototype
Apr — Jun 2022
Apr — Jun 2022
The final stretch of our capstone project entailed finalizing our design for Orion, selecting materials and designing for assembly + manufacturing, submitting a provisional patent, and creating a looks-like works-like prototype.
The three major components of Orion are the Portable Luminaires, System Controls, and Torchiere. The following sections detail the prototyping processes and DFA/DFM choices of each component.
Portable Luminaires
The portable luminaires will be made out of injection molded ABS plastic, with a pre-manufactured blow-molded globe for the shade. Each PL emits 270 lumens of light with PWM dimming; dimming is power efficient, and incredibly intuitive with the capacitive touch control strips.
Furthermore, equipped with qi wireless charging coil and an inset base, the portable luminaire housing makes docking for charging a self-aligning and intuitive process. The form is small for easy carrying, and its aesthetic is neutral and elegant to fit into a wide variety of interior design styles.
System Controls
How might we enable system connectivity without the use of an app? Controlling multiple light sources remotely would help make setup changes incredibly seamless, but during initial research, users indicated that they wouldn’t want an app to do so. We agreed, not wanting to add more digital clutter to our lives. The answer to that question was Zigbee.
Zigbee is a low-power communication protocol, and integrating it into Orion allows the PLs to be wirelessly controlled from the torchiere. You can turn off the entire system with one tap, change the brightness of all the PLs in one go, and jump to custom presets all from four buttons on the torchiere stem. Here’s a demonstration of preset jumping, along with protocol visualizations.
Torchiere
Our prototype torchiere is a modified version of a Home Depot floor lamp, but the manufacturable version will be made with 1.00” diameter threaded cold-rolled steel tubes — standard for lighting products. The head of the lamp, containing LEDs, provides overhead ambient light and is also made with standard lamp parts. Wires for electronics run down the stem and out the base for power.
The charging docks, made of injection molded ABS, contain qi charging coils that pair with those in the PLs to provide power. Furthermore, their 69deg lofted surface mates with the base of the PLs for a smooth self-aligning docking process. The torchiere stem also contains four capacitive touch buttons which are used to control the entire Orion system with on/off functionality, custom presets, and dimming functionality.
We were the recipients of the Capstone High Achievement award from the Segal Design Institute in June 2022 — we’re incredibly grateful for the recognition of our hard work throughout this past year. Our design process and external response to this project have validated Orion’s potential as a viable product, and we can’t wait to see where it goes next!