Designing the Monos Experience
Time for the finale of our three-part story of Monos - Designing the Experience.
One of the things we pride ourselves on is “experiential design” - designing experiences for others. We forged this skill over the last 10 years of creating art installations for hundreds of thousands of people.
Designing the experience is where the magic is made - ensuring the hardware, software, and programming all sing together in harmony to tell a story, to invoke different emotions in our audience.
Jake, one of the founders of color+light, is primarily responsible for this experiential design. Here’s what he had to say about Monos:
With Monos, we set out to create something truly distinct. Our dynamic, immersive lighting engine is at the heart of the product, so it was essential to give it the right canvas. We designed internal dividers inside the Monos shade to separate the canvas into 5 distinct faces.
By enabling each face of the Monos to animate independently, we unlocked the ability to create richer, more saturated visuals that are more exciting, and have more dimensionality to them.
Additionally, instead of settling for a typical plastic-looking lamp shade, we chose high-quality acrylic that offers a refined, glass-like appearance.
These two elements combine to form a depth of immersion we have not seen in other products. With this canvas, we aspire to be able to invoke feelings similar to sitting under a sky full of stars, cozying up next to a fireplace, or feeling the morning sun.
And finally, to make the interaction feel seamless and intuitive, we added an IR sensor that lets users control the lamp with a simple wave—no buttons, just a little bit of magic.