Light-in-light-out (li-lo) displays: Harvesting and manipulating light to provide novel forms of communication

Seunarine, Krishna; Kalarikalayil Raju, Dani; Thomas, Gethin; Thomas, Suzanne K.; Pockett, Adam; Reitmaier, Thomas; Steer, Cameron; Owen, Tom; Meena, Yogesh Kumar; Robinson, Simon; Pearson, Jennifer; Carnie, Matt; Sahoo, Deepak Ranjan; Jones, Matt

Abstract

Many of us daily encounter shadow and reflected light patterns alongside macro-level changes in ambient light levels. These are caused by elements - opaque objects, glass, mirrors, even clouds - in our environment interfacing with sunlight or artificial indoor lighting. Inspired by these phenomena, we explored ways of creating digitally-supported displays that use light, shade and reflection for output and harness the energy they need to operate from the sun or indoor ambient light. Through a set of design workshops we developed exemplar devices: SolarPix, ShadMo and GlowBoard. We detail their function and implementation, as well as evidencing their technical viability. The designs were informed by material understandings from the Global North and Global South and demonstrated in a cross-cultural workshop run in parallel in India and South Africa where community co-designers reflected on their uses and value given lived experience of their communication practices and unreliable energy networks.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
• Acceptance Date: Feb 10, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Apr 28, 2022
• Publication Date: Apr 28, 2022
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 5, 2023
• Pages: 1-15
• Book Title: CHI '22: Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• ISBN: 9781450391573
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517730
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11128879