The Effect of Context-aware Lighting in Primary Schools Using User-centred Design

Lighting design for educational places, especially primary schools, is considered as one of the most important effective factors in learning. Applying practical indicators along with aesthetical principles in designing educational environments will intrigue the creativity of learners as well as realizing their physical and spiritual needs. One of the most important indicators in definition of a desired environment is appropriate lighting (both natural and artificial). The combination of natural and artificial light helps us to achieve the best standard with regard to the place occupancy. According to the operational plan of the Ministry of Education in line with the government’s 5th Developmental Plan, all schools throughout the country must be included in one of the five intellectualism stages till the end of 1394. Intellectualism of schools make it possible for designers to benefit this opportunity and renew the role of lighting in environments by studying the advantages of natural lighting and optimizing the artificial lighting. On the other hand, the study of lighting systems and products show that great progress has been made in the fields of lighting design and technology in recent years. Nowadays, the interaction between light and intellectualized technology can be realized in different ways. For example, the staircases which become bright when walking on them or the lamps which turn off or on when getting close/away towards them, or the screens that change color when touching them. Other examples of lighting systems are interactional mirrors which produce different images depending on the images reflected on them. These screens are examples of intelligence designing. Designers can improve the conditions for children by using context-aware lighting systems in their environments. These are smart systems with the ability of measuring time and temperature and even identifying user’s identity. The invention of high lighting tricolor CDVs, DLP micro projectors, and inexpensive cameras, make lighting technologies more intellectualized than before. Nevertheless most of the time these extensive technologies are not used as they must be. Today’s available lighting resources are mostly static or their responses to the environment is so limited. Actually todays lighting technologies do not response to environmental stimulators and users perceptions. Furthermore, the lighting ability for information transformation is not utilized. This is while a lighting source can transfer the information as a text or a complicated video cam. Designers can improve conditions of educational place for children by using the ability of context-aware and intellectualize systems in time, user`s temperature and even user`s identity perception. Considering the government`s perspective for school intellectualism and replacing teacher oriented educational system by student oriented one, improving the educational environment to benefit of the students i.e. increasing students` participant in individual and group activities and stimulating their creativity seems quite necessary. Therefore, the aim of this paper is the study of a new lighting system in intellectualized schools with the ability to recognize and analyze the environmental stimulators and interact with users and receive and percept their spiritual and material needs and then to identify lighting requirements and produce and reflect the needed light in the environment. This new approach is introduced and analyzed in this descriptive-analytical paper. In the descriptive section of the paper the context-aware systems and their usage is mentioned. In the analytical section the practical schemes of these systems and their effects on primary school students is studied. The method is user oriented and both teachers and students have participated in the research procedure but the results are on the basis of students` performance as our main focuses. A context-aware interface for lighting a workshop room was designed according to the user-oriented design principles. Thirty children were experimented subjects in order to evaluate their feelings and their efficiency after imposing the changes. Results show that children feel better in context-aware lighting atmosphere and consequently learning conditions improve.