Vuur: Exploring Shared Interaction with Light

As LED lighting technology becomes omnipresent, lighting environments become more advanced and allow for adjusting various parameters such as color, brightness, and saturation. This poses challenges for interaction design, particularly when lighting environments are shared between multiple users. This paper presents “Vuur”: a shared physical interface with which users can control lighting in meeting room environments through gestures on the interface’s surface. A research-through-design exploration involving five variations of an experienceable Vuur prototype revealed that the interface enabled groups of participants to explore, and reach consensus about, shared lighting preferences. The findings are presented in four themes that emerged from qualitative analysis of the performed user studies: lighting needs, continued interaction, peripheral interaction, and shared interface. This early exploration of shared interaction with light lays out opportunities and insights for tangible and gestural interaction in the emerging domain of interactive lighting systems.