Heat Aura
Heat Aura aims to give users a more comfortable and convenient way to control the lighting and heating of their home and personal space. Its main goal is to provide users with a new responsive interface which provides them with feed-forward and feedback. This concept is unique as it offers an ‘emergent functionality’ when both the heating and lighting controllers are ‘merged’, which allows users to choose between an ambience mode which can connect to additional smart home systems like speakers.
Project Type : Group Project
Contribution: I participated at every step of the design process whilst stepping up at important moments to ensure the group progressed in an effective and timely manner.
Date: Feb/2024 – Apr/2024
1st Core Functionality
The 1st core functionality, related to comfort, was a heated pillow control device. Users could take one from the central hub, and after activating it, they could adjust the temperature of heating pillows in their close surroundings. They could increase the temperature by pulling it apart and exposing more ‘air intakes’ and vice versa.
After an initial sketch ideation we created a foam core prototype of the best concept, which allowed us to act out a use scenario and understand the different possible interactions better.
2nd Core Functionality
The 2nd core functionality, related to convenience, was a ‘wand’ which could be used to adjust the brightness and colour of individual lights by pushing a ring towards them, or rotating the ring. By combining the 1st and 2nd core functionality, an ’emergent’ functionality arose, which was the ‘IoT Bubble’. If the wand or heat controller are connected to this bubble, any devices in its range are adjusted.
To integrate the 1st functionality better its design was adapted and the different parts of the concept were 3D printed using PLA. This, again, allowed us to see how users could interact with these devices and how they interacted with one another.
Final Concept: Heat Aura
After interacting with the 2nd prototype, some discrepancies between the form-interaction-function relationships were found which we decided to address.
The final concept is a hub-like design which contains two rings – one for light adjustment and one for temperature. The rings can be taken off which gives decentralized control to the user for the chosen parameter.
The final prototype was also 3D printed using SLA, however it was then sanded down and to replicate screen functionality, cardboard cutouts were used.
To read more about the concept and my positioning in the ‘Rich Interaction’ methodology read more in this reflective paper: