Documentation – innovative design competition for street lighting

By wouterklaase March 28th, 2013

Second meeting with the residents

We organized a meeting with the residents to show our concepts and to have a discussion about the way to implement them in the Agavestraat. This time we wanted to use a more interactive way of working than only showing a powerpoint. We printed a map and some pictures of the Agavestraat and we took some paper and pens to let the residents write down their ideas. We asked if they could write down what – according to them – are the positive and negative aspects of their street.

Furthermore we let them draw out their daily routine and we asked to describe the way they feel about the Agavestraat, making use of three words. This way we could discover the way they think about the street, which is partly based on the first associations that are made when talking about it. This can be done by writing things down and have a discussion about the street. After this interactive part we showed our concept presentation, and we let the residents give feedback on it. They told us which parts they like, but also which parts of the street they would like to see improved, and how we could make use of already existing objects in the street.

By wouterklaase March 14th, 2013

Visit to the Indal Industria factory in Emmen

To get an insight in the production of public lighting, our project supervisors took us to the Indal Industria factory in the city of Emmen. Klaas Faber, the account manager of the factory, shortly introduced the work of Indal in a presentation. He told that the factory had been taken over by Philips, but although this big company will have a lot of influence on the production, Indal still manages to be very unique in the street lighting market: the production system that is used is very flexible and customer-orientated. This means that when receiving an order from a municipality or an investor, the factory will do their best to make the product as specific as possible. This flexibility is one of the key factors of the successful production of Indal. Furthermore he explained that the factory is currently switching to producing more LED light, which is called ‘ the light of the future’ because it is said to be more sustainable and effective than the older light systems.

While listening to the presentation, a lot of different street lights – with and without LED – were exposed in the same room, as you can see behind us.

In this picture you can see that the lamp in the middle of the whiteboard uses LED light. You can see it by the shape of the little light bulbs. Klaas Faber explained that you can reach different effects of LED light with color: you could for example use cool-, neutral- and warm white light. Deciding which color should be used depends on the wishes of the customers. Do you want the light to be nice and warm? Should it simply give more light then there is now in the area? Should it give the feeling of safety?

To compare, the street light at the right side can give a cosy feeling to a street: the design of this is a nostalgic one, but of course you can put modern LED light inside.

After the introduction we went to the working place, where we saw how the light product was crafted both by machines and human hands. Instead of being confronted with endless assembly lines, we saw people working intensively on creating the street lights out of raw material. Especially the very thin material of LED light panels requires a precise treatment. The different stadia of the production of a light and it’s armature were shown: the digital draft of the product, putting the LED lights together in the right spots, the aluminium shaping and cutting, powder coating of the aluminium to make the material resistant against the bad weather, implementing the light into the material, testing, putting the product into the packaging and then put them in the lorry to transport them.

In this picture you can see how the LED lights are put together to make them work effectively. The LEDs are delivered in strips, which looked a bit like film strips. The machines then put the tiny light sources in the right order, so they can be used in the specific products.

We learned a lot about the way street lights are crafted. Although we have to come up with our own concept, we can use our new knowledge as inspiration. We have seen the technologies to make common lights, but also the way that Indal experiments with technology and design. In the lighting industry, it’s always necessary to think about the future, because public lighting is a landscape that is changing very rapidly. In this picture you can see a design that we don’t see that much in the streets, but maybe we will see them appear more in the future, or maybe a light that is only based on this design. Light is never a finished product, because it can always be inspiration for new ideas.

Via the link indal-lighting.nl you can find more information about the Philips Indal factory.

By wouterklaase March 7th, 2013

Brainstorming with Charlie Mulholland

Charlie Mulholland came to the MediaLAB to teach about brainstorming. He told that, according to the creative process-model of Tassoul, you are dealing with divergent and convergent thinking during the development of a project: in the first phase you are exploring a lot of information and theories, and in the second phase you will have to select the best ones to come to one clear point again. Un important aspect of brainstorming is that in most cases you are dealing with a ‘wicked problem’: a problem that is ill-defined. Therefore the first step is to know exactly what the problem is. While redefining the problem in your own words you can also look at the answers that don’t help. By this you can make your vision broader and see the problem from a different perspective. The next step is to decide who the stakeholders are. Come up with as much stakeholders as possible. Don’t be critical, just write them down!

So let’s use this model for our project, the Agavestraat. According to the Light Challenge 2013 the problem is that the lighting is not sustainable and innovative enough, and it never included any participation with the residents. If you take this problem in consideration once more, a logical question is: are these also the problems of the residents or do they have different issues? During our first meeting in Almere the residents told us that they do not always have a save feeling in the street, and for some people the street light is shining too powerful into their houses. When taking all this information together (convergent thinking), maybe we can come up with a better definition of the problem, for example: how can we renew the streetlight in the Agavestraat to be more sustainable and meaningful for the residents? In that way we captured the term ‘innovation’ in ‘renew’, sustainable is in this definition and in ‘meaningful’ the elements of savety and light-effectivity for the residents are included.

What are the negative ideas that won’t give a solution? Using a lot of light will certainly not be the right answer, because that doesn’t automatically make the street saver, and people will have too much light shining into their houses. Also we can’t use too much energy, because the government will have to spend too much money.

Who are our stakeholders? The most important ones are of course the residents, the Light Challenge and the municipality. But besides these three we can come up with more parties: ourselves, MediaLAB, companies that make material for street lights, investors, light artists, other visitors of the Agavestraat, people who leave nearby, animals, police and journalists.

By wouterklaase March 1st, 2013

Masterclass University of Twente, Brainstorming Video

Brainstorming with Marnix, Rob, Geurt and André.

By wouterklaase March 1st, 2013

Masterclass University of Twente

The first Masterclass was about teambuilding and brainstorming. It was held in Enschede, at the University of Twente. After having a coffee and talking to our coach, the light experts and the other teams that participate in the Light Challenge we went to the Smart Experience Lab. There we listened to four presentations. The first one was about teambuilding and was held by the coach of the Dames Waterpolo Team 2008, Robin van Galen. He told about the different phases of the Tuckman Theory: a theory to systemize your teambuilding. It is a useful way to deal with the different characters in a team, and to combine the best qualities of people in order to realize the main goal, in our case: to win the challenge. The second presentation was held by one of the winners of the Light Challenge 2011. She told the story about her winning concept, The TriON-concept in Assen: a new design of street light combined with the trees in the street. The trees blocked the light coming from the old lantarns, so they made a combination of the trees and a new light system. The other two presentations were held by men who worked at companies specialized in lighting concepts. They told about the concepts they developed, like a street light with colors that can be controlled by the residents, and an alternative way to light up a highway in a safe and sustainable way. This last concept was realised by a company called Tauw, you can find information about it here: tauw.com

After the break we held a brainstorm session together with our coach, with people working at companies and with light experts. Each one of us wrote down or drew his/her ideas for a specific concept in the Agavestraat. Not being held back by legislation and other restrictions, we came up with some creative concepts. One person in the brainstorm group suggested that we should combine our ideas. After that we were able to formulate a question which contained all of the elements that we wanted to pay attention to: make the street more cozy, more meaningful to residents and divide the light in a more effective way.

By wouterklaase February 22nd, 2013

Meeting with Marcel Bolten

How can we create participation of users in our project? We decided to make our blog interactive, so the residents of the Agavestraat can comment on our work or give advise to improve it. To gather information about them we also created an online survey that the residents can fill out. It contains questions about the current light in their street, how they would like to improve it and some personal facts (gender, age).

Marcel Bolten, an urban and public designer, told us that there are more ways to get information from users. For a design concept in public space it’s necessary to know exactly how the users think, what kind of assocations they make and what their daily routines are. Useful techniques to discover this are context mapping, intervening in peoples rituals, observing, and focus groups. Context mapping is a method of contextual research with users, to discover the context of our concept and what its use will be. Focus groups are like surveys (it has the goal of questioning the user), but than in an interactive way. This way you can really get an in-depth conversation with the users and you can discover their daily routines.

Marcel Bolten also gave some advice to brainstorm about a possible design for our light concept. Techniques like making collages and the ‘Wiebertjesmodel’ can help to stimulate and organize thinking on a design. The concept really has to fit to the needs of the users but we must also think for ourselves and come up with creative out-of-the-box ideas for a design concept. One thing we can really use is the problem of the dark alleys in the Agavestraat. In the night time this place is so dark that you can’t see anything. How to come up with a design for this? We have to generate a lot of ideas, and must not be afraid to throw older ideas away. Decision making is the key to the succes of a design concept. In this link you can find more information about urban and public design projects of Marcel Bolten: omgeef.nl

By wouterklaase February 22nd, 2013

Meeting with Marco van Hout

To get a grip on the broad field of possible research cases the Light Challenge 2013 Contest included some main topics in their program that we have to integrate in our project: sustainability, innovation and participation with the other parties. Since Marco van Hout is a research designer, we asked him if he could give some advice for our research progress and our research questions. He gave us some ideas to form our main research question. What do the terms sustainability, innovative and participation really mean? And how can you make this terms and the main question testable/measurable? As we also want to include the topic of safety in our project, we should think about what ‘safety’ exactly means. Safety is not only about putting more or less light in a street. Since Marco is specialised in mixing design with emotion, he knows that it is also about giving the people the feeling that they are save. Than you are talking about the meaning that light has for people and the mood that light creates.

The main research question that we formed is: how can an interactive lighting system be meaningful, sustainable and safe for the residents of the Agavestraat?

Above is the presentation about our research phase that we showed to him.

In the link design-emotion.com you can check out the work of Marco.

By wouterklaase February 13th, 2013

Meeting our users

We are going to meet the people who will make use of our project in the future. The meeting will be in an office close to the street that we will work on.

All the parties that are participating in the project are present: the local government, people in charge of managing the public light and most important, the people who live in the Agavestraat.

The people that we met were valuable sources of information for our research. It was useful to get the meeting on camera, so we can always look back on it and use the material in our future work. We also took notes on paper and made an audiorecording.

After explaining what the Light Challenge exactly is, the residents of the Agavestraat gave their opinion about the lighting in the street. We asked questions about their ideas for improvement, but also about their experience with light. Are there any kinds of problems with the light? What about safety?

Now let’s visit The Agavestraat. Looking around and paying attention to the details is essential in the research progress. A visit at night is really useful, because you can clearly see the effects of the street lights that are on.

By wouterklaase February 12th, 2013

Brainstorming about our user scene

The first step is to think about our users: who are they and how do they make use of light?

How are we going to depict our users? A presentation, a poster or a short movie are different ways to present our concept to the public.

Let’s make a short movie about users and their experience. Now we have to create a storyboard.

We have to depict our users precisely and the way they use light in a public space. We might surprise or tease the viewers of our video a little, to get their maximum attention for our subject. Therefore the sequence and timing of shots and the transition between them must be perfect. Let’s try to already draw it in detail before we start to film, so we have a clear basis.

By niallmackellar February 12th, 2013

CREATING TOMORROW

innovative design competition for street lighting

Team

Commissioner:

Description