Wellness has grown increasingly popular, especially for students undergoing the stressors of university class. This presents a challenge for wellness products targeting this demographic: what is a mindfulness product to this group but another series of alarms, timers, and schedules to keep track of?

The Skyshine LED lamp concept injects a modern whimsy to produce a wellness product interested in a softer, gentler approach to intervention. Chiefly, the product is also not targeted at students but at universities and dormitory associations as a way to promote wellness where traditional walk-in or appointment services may be inadequate.

Skyshine

Can we reduce the user's initial investment cost of wellness products—time, energy—to zero?

User research

Empathy mapping

Product development

Product visualisation

Team

Shoji Ushiyama: Product designer

Context

INDS-1003 Body, Object, & Digital Space, Winter 2021

Tools used

Photoshop, Blender

Product Overview

The Skyshine desk lamp is a fixture designed to promote awareness of the passage of time and help the circadian rhythm.

Unlike wellness apps or services, however, the Skyshine lamp accomplishes this by subtly but noticeably changing the quality of its light output—mimicking the passage of the sun through the sky as the day rolls by. at night it takes on a softer, warmer tinge.

If extra light is necessary, the blind can be lifted to override this behaviour and act like a standard task light, which means the user is always in control of the light's behaviour in the end.

Problem Space: Finding Wellness in Chaos

I was a university student right when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Through the stress and emotional turmoil, it exposed a lot of weaknesses in the wellness space. Nothing ever felt like it was meeting me where I was—both metaphorically (I was busy with classes) and literally (I was stuck at home).

Conducting informal interviews with other classmates and friends, I found that my sentiments were shared among many of them. Existing wellness solutions had huge barriers that were difficult to overcome.

What barriers did existing offerings have?

University wellness services

Students are aware the university offers these services, but the ones who need them the most are often too stressed or busy to budget more energy and time towards making appointments.

Wellness apps & techniques

Many students dlike fill their workspace with even more notifications and ringers these apps or techniques demand, which ironically stresses them out more.

Counter-intuitively, existing solutions undermine their appeal by requiring users to invest already limited time and energy towards them.

Defining: In Bed Late, Up Early

To start defining the problems I wanted to tackle with this product, I focused the research that I did so far into an empathy map.

The empathy map helped organise the information that I have, and allowed me to start seeing patterns with time management and sleep schedules, as well as a number of key product goals and constraints that I would need to keep in mind for a successful product design.

Who is my target user?

I am a

busy, stressed university student

trying to

maintain a healthy lifestyle while balancing school obligations with my social needs

making sure I get enough rest every night and going to sleep at a reasonable time

But

it's easy to get lost in what I'm doing, be it hanging out or doing coursework, and it's hard to keep a regular sleep schedule for more than a few days

Because

I'm busy, and there's always some alarm or deadline coming up that needs addressing now, if not something urgent that needs me to pull a late night

So I

try to use wellness services or wellness apps that need me to take more time out of my day or set up more reminders for obligations

Making me feel

even more stressed, and like I have less time to do the things I need or want to do, especially when I fail to commit to them, which also makes me feel unsuccessful

What constraints would this product have to work in?

user is frugal

University students tend to be extra-cautious with their money at this point in their life. There's a lot of hesitation with buying things that aren't absolutely necessary or inexpensive.

user has unpredictable living arrangements

University students tend to move frequently—as much as once every few months—and so they don't want to own too many things to have to lug around. They also want to ensure that what they do own will work in whatever living situation they find themselves in next.

user is transient

Students are only students for a few years before they graduate. By then, the struggles they have with other solutions may go away altogether. This product may only be relevant to them for a short time.

I realised that the constraints meant I more opportunity if this product's target buyer was accommodation services and student housing developers. With this in mind, I created a simplified product brief to align myself for the design phase. that I would need to keep in mind for a successful product design.

Product Brief: Skyshine

Background & objective

University students would like a better way to keep track of time, especially during late nights, so they don't miss out on sleep.

The Skyshine lamp is a fixture that will allow students remain aware of the passage of time subtly and intuitively, so they are less prone to accidentally staying up late, without the stress and commitment overhead of existing time management and wellness solutions.

Target user

Busy, often quite stressed, university students who have erratic work and sleep schedules.

Requirements

Product must be a luminary artefact (a lamp).
Product must inform the target user on the passage of time.
Product must not be distracting to the user: no alarms, timers, or warnings.
Product must allow the user to "opt out" or "override" its intervention, in case of sudden/urgent change to user's sleep schedule.

Target client

Developers and universities who run or furnish student accommodation.

Developing: The Whimsical Window

I decided to explore how the light from a lamp might be used to give a broad sense of the passage of time. Quickly I realised I was making a lamp that imitated the way changing sunlight affected the feel of a room over the course of a day.

The initial sketch concepts were quite varied, and I began to lean more and more into the fun and whimsy of this "false window" concept. The sash window form would be more appropriate to a desk setting, and would allow for direct interaction by the target user.

I conceived of the idea of having the lamp be controlled by raising and lowering the shade—a bit of that mundane whimsy and fun to differentiate it from other lighting products.

Final Concept

The final concept lamp could both be an element of the background, yet very present in the user's mind.

I went with a warm material selection of wood and soft, diffuse plastic to portray a sense of mundanity, familiarity, and warmth, while ensuring the product was scalable in terms of its production. The simple control and form factor allows for intuitive operation.

What did I learn from this project?

Sometimes the end user and the target customer is not the same. Being open to that difference let me reshape the field of constraints pertaining to the design problem.

Stakeholders, stakeholders, stakeholders

As a UX designer I tend to fixate very much on the user's wants and needs—after all, that's in the title. But it can also lead to tunnel vision about the greater context a design problem exists in, and I think I would have been much more limited had my target customer been students.

Overall, I'm more appreciative of the way various stakeholders within and without a project like this can have a profound effect on the trajectory of design.

Research is key

Ironically, the circumstance that inspired this concept for the assignment—the COVID pandemic—limited what I was able to explore and do with it.

Fabricating a prototype and being able to test the feasibility of the subtle changes in lighting would have been very instructive in developing this concept, and may have also offered some insight or revelations that may have influenced the final outcome.

For next time...

A project like this would benefit from an extended research phase. I only did some informal interviews and desk research to determine the target user for this product. Having a more in depth understanding would lead to a more focused design process.

Also, while I really enjoyed the act of thinking through the process and problem space of this product, being able to make a real prototype (or several, really) to truly test the concept in whatever iteration it is would inform me on the possible success of the product. It would help to identify any shortcomings in how I approached the problem, whether it be an oversight with engineering, stakeholder constraints, or not meeting user needs in a satisfying way.