© Mute © Jack Brotman
Putting people first By Ruth Slavid
Four researchers and practitioners in the field of lighting convened in Boston to discuss the “Internet of people” – how to humanise developments in technology. They were: Yihyun Lim, director of the MIT Design Lab; Tapio Rosenius, CEO of Skandal Technologies and a founder of the Lighting Design Collective; Arlon Bayliss, an artist, sculptor and glass-maker; and, Jose dos Santos, head of design and user experience at Signify for the Americas region. Editor and writer Elizabeth Donoff chaired the discussion.
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“Design studios should become like start-ups to disrupt this old industry.”
Yihyun Lim
Elizabeth Donoff
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Tapio Rosenius
Arlon Bayliss
Jose dos Santos
Elizabeth Donoff: What role can light play in a digital society? How can we re-educate the public to see light as more than just something providing illumination? Jose dos Santos: Most people do not connect lighting to any sort of digital platform or revolution. That is an interesting challenge for us, to help people understand the benefits, because lack of understanding will switch people directly into fear mode. Suddenly lighting is there and you don't know anything about it. Arlon Bayliss: I wonder whether artists have a role in this. Artists have traditionally trodden a line between fear and acceptance and introduced new thinking or challenges. If you look at some of the developments in public art using new technologies, you can see that people are beginning to be exposed to that kind of thing. Art provides a safe environment for change to happen. Yihyun Lim: I think that empathy and emotions can be embedded in the experience of light, sound and smell. If we can go back to those basic experiences and communicate them to the overall public, it should help people understand more.
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Tapio Rosenius
Arlon Bayliss: People don't play unless they feel that that they're in a safe environment. You’ve got to create that. We have to think not just about the product but about how we bring the product to people - they are much more likely to play with things that are familiar than things that are completely new and scary. Yihyun Lim: What's going to remain in the future, regardless of where technology goes, is human experience. We want to make sure that we carry forward human values. We do this through scenario-based design, creating scenarios using personas that are well rounded, to show that these are the kind of human emotions that the product or service or experience can enlist in a user. Elizabeth Donoff: What do you want to communicate to a client for a potential project? Tapio Rosenius: Rule number one: Never ask. Pitch. If you ask a client, you're asking an amateur to make a decision. You excite them, you give them a new idea. You give them confidence and they allow you to go with it. You are the professional. They are not.
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© Jack Brotman
“I want to walk into a room that understands who I am” Arlon Bayliss
Arlon Bayliss: I disagree with Tapio. I think it's important to give the client or the customer a sense that they're engaged as much as you are. In order to move forward with confidence, they must leave the room feeling more excited than when they came in. Tapio Rosenius: But you engage them. You don't ask them what to do or the end result will be bad. And 99 percent of our contracts ask us to do bad lighting. And we refuse. So we smuggle these other things in in a way that makes them think it was their idea.
Tapio Rosenius: Now I want the exact opposite, that the services and the things that will make my life better do not require any attention from me, or any kind of user interface. It's just there, the same way as the air is and natural light is, and it's full of these sudden surprises and unexpected events. Elizabeth Donoff: Do you see a return to using natural daylight as a more fundamental source?
Yihyun Lim: As a lab we want to explore the spectrum of emotions. Light plays a big part because we respond immediately to changes in light. And the user interface is vital because you can design the most sophisticated system, but if the users that it's designed for can't decipher how to use it then your work goes nowhere.
Jose dos Santos: We have taken steps within Signify to transform that into a body of knowledge and even a business. It’s about recognizing the impact that nature and natural light have on people, and trying to understand what is the right handshake between lighting and light.
Jose dos Santos: I want to simplify this conversation so that more people, more businesses can actually articulate and talk this new language of lighting.
Tapio Rosenius: During our earlier conversation about Lifi, I started thinking, why don't we just put an electronic filter on a window and start flickering it like that. A beam of sun carries a million megabytes. We could start manipulating daylight in an exciting and fun way. That'd be great: "Skyfi" or "Sunfi".
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Learn more: Watch the complete recording of the interview on Signify Lighting Academy channel: bit.ly/2mo5fOY Websites www.design.mit.edu www.arlonbayliss.com www.skandal.tech www.ldcol.com www.signify.com/lightingacademy
Arlon Bayliss: It’s important not to ignore history, and to look at other emerging technologies, and think about what happened when those were introduced. It would be interesting to look at some things that we might want to avoid or some lessons that we could learn. Tapio Rosenius: We have an industry that's quite conservative. So we should start innovating. Design studios should all become like start-ups to try to disrupt some aspects of this old industry in order to build it up again. Yihyun Lim: I think that goes back to the whole idea of open sourcing. Can we invite the public to play with us to design a new language? Or maybe create a common language among designers, lighting designers and architects? Elizabeth Donoff: Are there new things that you expect to become widespread soon?
And I think that there will be more conversations about the quality of light and its effect on people. Yihyun Lim: A lot of research and money is going into computer vision. And I think that's going to change, maybe enhance, the way that our environment senses us. Tapio Rosenius: I think that within two to three years we will see lighting as a hardware platform. The real value and cost will relate to software-based interventions. So a lot of big players will focus on software development, which could lead eventually to a point where the hardware is, for example free, and you just pay various kinds of subscription. Arlon Bayliss: I want to walk into a room that understands who I am, what music I like to play. It understands what lighting I want. It understands the time of the day, the time of the year. And who else is in the room with me.
Jose dos Santos: I think we will see systems that are naturally connected and allow us to do more things.
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