LUMI

This was my first fully 3D-modelled project, built entirely from 3D-printed parts and electronics. The brief was a critical one - design a product that encourages responsible social-media use and questions our addiction to it. Mine became a lamp: an object for people living with ADHD, anxiety, social-media addiction, or some combination of the three.

As critical design, LUMI is meant to provoke as much as to function. The premise is simple: the antidote to a screen shouldn't be another screen. A lamp is ambient, physical and already in the room - so rather than an app nagging you from the same device that's the problem, LUMI is designed to answer your screen time in the space around you, a quiet light-based nudge instead of another notification. The point isn't the gadget; it's the question it asks about how we'd actually want technology to intervene.

I modelled and 3D-printed a set of threaded components that screw together, and designed the internal housing to hold LED lighting strips - built to be driven by an app or custom software. It was where I learned to model for manufacture rather than just for the screen: parts that have to thread, align and genuinely fit together.

What exists is the artefact - a working lamp object, designed for the screen-time-responsive behaviour but not yet running it. The software side is deliberately left open: the next stage of the project rather than this one. I'd rather show the honest state of it - a finished object and an unfinished system - than pretend the hard part is done.