Designing Tangible Lighting Control Interfaces

Abstract

This paper aims to design a prototype tangible user interface (TUI) for lighting control, and test its usability and end-user experience against a prototype conventional interface. Usability is concerned with easier understanding of control functions. End-user experience is concerned with explicating the quality of end-users' experience such as fun and pleasure of use. TUIs that offer end-users freedom of personal expression alongside functional information are proposed as a basis for making lighting control systems easier to understand and more pleasurable to use. Three dominant views on tangible interaction are explored to derive a set of synthesized principles for designing tangible lighting control interfaces. These principles—which determine what end-users should see and do while using lighting control interfaces and provide specific guidelines for enhancing their physical interaction possibilities—are used to design a prototype tangible interface. Several tests were performed to obtain end-user responses towards the usability and end-user experience of the tangible interface as well as a conventional interface. End-user responses obtained from these tests challenge manufacturers' claims about the effectiveness of conventional lighting control interfaces and reveal a different way of thinking about future interface designs. Such a change in thinking could lead to lighting control interface designs that are easier to understand and more pleasurable to use.