Bringing Illuminate to Life.

From Concept to Creation.

Collaboration is essential in nearly every environment, but it often comes with challenges. Issues like unequal contributions, lack of organization, and clashing work styles can hurt a team’s productivity and morale. These problems can impact everything from student projects to company performance—especially in larger organizations that rely on cross-functional teams and complex coordination.

Why TUI?

Unique Purpose

Tangible interfaces are known to support collaboration by providing multiple points of entry to an activity, like group discussions.

User Agency

TUIs can be an extension of an individual, helping to empower people to be themselves, allowing them to interact with the world so that the world fits into them.

Our Proposed Solution

In today’s increasingly virtual world, speaking up in meetings can feel stressful or tiring. Giving each person a physical object to signal their input offers a simple, concrete way to participate—boosting confidence, encouraging equal contribution, and making everyone feel heard.

Visualizing Illuminate

A storyboard of Illuminate illustrating how the system interacts and evolves in real time.

How We Evolved

Illuminate has come a long way from its original form—take a look at how it’s evolved.

Usability and intuitiveness were key priorities in our initial design process, but we also focused on aesthetics. Visual elements can enhance the user experience, so we aimed to create a playful design using color and shape, something that would stand out and draw attention.

As we gathered resources and refined the scope of the project, our design evolved. We maintained an emphasis on color and visual appeal while introducing a flatter, more compact shape to improve practicality.

Our low-fidelity prototype came out perfectly. But, moving from our low-fidelity to high-fidelity prototype involved some trial and error. We initially planned for the entire artifact to be made of glass, but even with soldering, it was difficult to secure the pieces.

To address this, we shifted to 3D-printed materials for most of the structure while retaining a glass top. This allowed us to preserve our intended aesthetics and incorporate the blue and yellow lighting, while also staying realistic about feasibility and project constraints.

Our high-fidelity prototype balances function and aesthetics. The glass component signals both urgent and non-urgent inputs while also enhancing the visual design. We selected a dome shape to allow space for the Arduino wiring to be stored effectively.

Our Final Prototype

We refined our prototype by enhancing both its functionality and design. We added more lights and increased their brightness, creating a more vivid and attention-grabbing visual effect. We also redesigned the PLA body to fit the circuits with greater precision. These updates resulted in a cleaner, more polished look that better reflects the product’s intended experience.