Control Redesign

Control Redesign

September 2017

I redesigned the physical light dimmer that created better affordances.

Task

Throughout the project, I was supposed to identify poorly-designed physical control around me, and improve it iteration by iteration.

Procedure

I examined many existing controls. At first I noticed some "notorious" controls, such as parking meters and vending machines. However before I started working on them, I thought the solutions were sort of "obvious" and offered no intellectual challenges. I decided to work on light dimmer to make the hand gesture even more natural -- like what I put in the process book, "as if one is playing a musical instrument".

I thought the current light dimmers were great, but just as an experiment, I would like to see if we can encourage other types of interactions to control the indoor brightness.

The final design, called "Stritch", allows its users to slide up and down for the brightness, just like any stringed instruments. The users can also double tap on the strings to quickly turn the lights on or off.

Process Book