Empathetic Design
Editorial for arc Magazine, January 2021
I was waiting to receive results of a medical test in a brightly lit, cold, windowless corridor a few days ago and, as the adrenalin and cortisol pulsed through me I realised it wasn’t the results that were making me feel so extremely anxious, it was the environment I was sat in that was compounding it. Bright, cold, overhead light pulsed about and reflected and bounced of every white surface, flickering and agitating the space. I began to think back to all the people I have spoken to in lighting about its effect on our wellbeing and I realised that whoever had designed this specific space, or not designed it that is more likely; had never themselves had to wait for a medical test result. Or, worse still they had been through the exact same scenario, but had not then used their understanding of how people feel in that moment, in that environment, to improve their design.
This got me to thinking, I want to know if feelings are too subjective for lighting design to consider, should or could lighting be empathetic, could it care more? I want to start a discussion about this..
2020 was unprecedented, a genuine game changer for pretty much everyone around the world. When any seismic shifts happen things can go either way. We adapt, we innovate and we move forward or we falter and we panic, make rash decisions and we ultimately stop functioning. Observing the changes in society reminded me of the changes I have seen in the lighting. LEDification and digitalisation where light’s revolution. It was a massive disruption to everything, one which removed certainty and created shareholder unrest. What has followed are years of teetering uncertainty, of how to adapt and innovate and how to move forward.
When faced with the potential of LED technology and digitalisation I think it has been too overwhelming, to competitive, driven too hard by the “let’s make it – because we can” reflex. It has seemed that for over a decade everything was prefixed with ‘Smart’, whether it was or not. Then we had connectivity – your lights could tell your fridge to tell you TV to send you a WhatsApp message saying that you needed to buy milk, and this service wasn’t cheap. In contrast to the smart/connective drive we saw the rise of Human Centric Lighting, #Betterlight, healthy light and an awareness of our own circadian rhythms. People were standing up and demonstrating intelligent scientific evidence that light affects us, that lighting manufactures and designers have a responsibility to consider the people they illuminate in relation to their physical and mental wellbeing…