Sharing meaning and physical activity through a tangible interactive lighting object

This paper searches to explore the relation between designing for interaction and designing for systems by building an interactive lighting object as a part of a system for sharing meaning. The reflective transformative design process with extensive user involvement resulted in creation of an interactive lamp that expresses human-inspired behaviours that can be shared with another lighting object. Different from existing studies, the sharing of meaning was explored in the interaction between the human and the product instead of merely by observation. The preliminary tests showed that shared meaning through interactive lighting behaviours were difficult to interpret to be similar on cognitive (perceptual) level. On the level of experience the object promoted shared aesthetically pleasing responses and was intriguing for users to explore and create shared value