A wood-and-glass lamp for university students that doubles as a guided breathing exercise. Place your hands on the base and the light pulses to slow your breath, no app, no screen.
Mental health is a vast subject. The funnel from there to a desk lamp came from where anxiety actually shows up in young adults' lives, and from the techniques that consistently come out on top as ways to manage it.
A broad starting point, sharpened by the rise in post-pandemic anxiety.
Gen Z is the most anxious generation on record; uncertainty about the future is a constant.
For students, anxiety is highest while studying or working, and the desk is where it lands.
Across a dozen reviewed sources, breathing exercises consistently ranked top alongside physical exercise.
Ilia works like a normal desk lamp until you place your hands on its wooden base. Two modes let the user choose how much initiative the lamp takes.
The lamp stays out of the way. Breathing is available whenever you want it, never when you don't.
For users who already know when they need a break.Every two hours, the light turns blue on its own and waits. It only resets once you complete a full two-minute cycle.
For users who lose track of time and would otherwise never stop.Switch between modes with a potentiometer at the back of the base.
The form had to feel warm, calm, and tactile. Something a stressed student would actually want on their desk.
An organic, slightly random glass shape, not a perfect dome. Calmer, less product-like, more atmospheric.
The base is what the user actually places their hands on. Wood invites that contact in a way plastic or metal wouldn't.
Testing showed no single size worked for everyone. Both versions shipped, with slightly different necks.
Glass made first with Ingrid in the hot workshop, then cold-worked and sandblasted. Wood prepared by gluing MDF blocks, then turned on the lathe by the technicians as we assisted.
We made the glass first, then realised it was too small to sit properly on the bases we'd designed. The base couldn't shrink. It needed the room for the electronics. So we went back to the hot workshop and remade four new glasses, experimenting with deeper creases this time, and picked the best two.
The lamp uses LDRs (light-dependent resistors) on the sides of the base to detect when hands cover them. Proximity sensors and touch sensors were on the table early on, but LDRs were small enough to stay discreet, and the team had already coded with them. A simple sensor doing a poetic job.
Runs the code, drives the NeoPixel animation, and reads sensor input. Lives inside the hollowed-out base.
Soldered to wire extensions so they could sit on opposite sides of the base. When hands cover both, ambient light drops, and the breathing cycle starts.
An 8-pixel ring inside the glass diffuser. Yellow as the default lamp glow, soft pulsing blue during a breathing cycle.
Located at the back of the base. Switches between Free and Timed mode with a turn.
A USB-cable inline switch cuts power directly, simpler than wiring a soft on/off into the code and saves a sliver of electricity when the lamp's idle.
Pulsing the LED smoothly turned out to need a sine function, beyond what we'd learned at that point. Our tutor Matthew helped us with the maths so the breathing animation actually breathed, not stepped.
Two phases of testing. Quick studio sessions with first-time users, and a longer context test with one student keeping the lamp on her desk for a full day.
Testers found the interaction intuitive without instructions. One described the design as "the right balance between interesting and basic enough to fit my space."
The two-size split resolved itself naturally. Larger hands preferred the bigger base; smaller hands preferred the smaller. No single ideal size, just two right ones.
No visible markings around the potentiometer made mode-switching unclear. Easy fix with an engraved knob, flagged as a development.
One tester with severe anxiety noted that touching the base continuously could trigger sensory overload. Raised a real question about contact-required interactions.
