Ljusna - Karin Myhrberg

Bachelor thesis

10 weeks 2022

Project Pitch

Today, mental illness is one of our most common folk diseases, with the withdrawals of antidepressants reaching record high levels within Sweden. Todays medication brings a lot of side effects, resulting in the act of reaching out for help feeling very big. By using light therapy the amount of medication can be reduced, mental illness can be eased and prevented.

This project aims to enlighten the subject of mental illness from the problem statement: How might we, by design, provide light therapy for personal use? The aim of the product is to facilitate mental wellbeing by implementing light therapy in everyday life in a natural way.

Thesis project supervised by Lambert & Fils.

Core idea

Normalize light therapy and its place in our homes by making its appearance more appealing. Users also wanted to have the possibility to move the lamp around as well as being able to direct the light to their liking.

Process

Troughout the process usergroups helped out, analyzing their aquired needs.

Experts within the field of light and psychology shared their valuable knowledge on how light therapy treatment is carried out today and how different kinds of light effect us differently.

In this stage different ways of directing light was tried out and evaluated.

Outcome

The result of this project is Ljusna, a light therapy lamp for home use. By its clean design, broad variety of expression and easy use Ljusna is made to fit your everyday life. Enabeling a more accessible way to light therapy.

Light temperature

The temperature of the light changes during the course of the day, from a colder tone in the morning to a warmer tone towards the evening. This is in order to help the body to maintain a healthy circadian rythm which is favourable in order to maintain a good mental wellbeing.

Sensors

Touch sensors are installed in the body of the lamp. They sense all contact on the lower part of the lamp body and therefore works as a controller. By a sweeping touch the light temperature can be changed. The lamp is to be switched on and off by a simple touch, as illustrated on the right picture.

Screens

Ljusna comes with three screens which can be used to direct the light to the users liking. If the screens are not desired they can easily be removed.

Colours

Different colour combinations of the body and chord enables for the user to chose a design that fits them.