Using a Multi-touch Panel to Control Lights in Indoor Public Space - Prototype Designs and User Studies

This research aims at designing light controllers suitable for controlling public lights. From the survey conducted in this research, we found that 34 of 35 participants have experienced confusion of lights controlling in public spaces, such as lecture halls, libraries, meeting rooms, and class rooms. One major reason is that public spaces usually include multiple lighting fixtures which sometimes are difficult to map out the switches. The other reason is that the controller may be unfamiliar to the users. Although some mistaken controls are acceptable, they may result in embarrassing situations.
This research proposed two methods for controlling the lights. The first method, map light controller (MLC), is to integrate a gesture control and 2D CAD layout. Users might use one finger or two-finger-gesture to control the lights individually or as a group. The second method, interactive map light controller (IMLC), is to integrate a gesture control with an interactive 3D colorful display. We developed a simulator to simulate the use of MLC, IMLC, and two commonly used light switches: rocker light switch (RLS) and light control bar (LCB).
A virtual lecture hall equipped with 60 seats and 7 independent luminaries was chosen as an experimental site. And we conducted two user tests, a qualitative test and a quantitative one, to validate MLC and IMLC in the control of these luminaries in the lecture hall.
We first conducted a quantitative test (N=30) using three tasks of lighting controls and compared the speed and performance between controllers. In terms of speed and performance, MLC and IMLC were significant better than RLS. After the quantitative test, we set up EyeLink, an eye tracker, for measuring users'' (N=5) eye positions when controlling the lights in the simulator.
We found that using both MLC and IMLC could reduce the eye movements between light controller and the virtual lecture hall. The users focused more on the controller as using RLS and LCB but more on the virtual lecture hall as using MLC and IMLC.