
Floorplan Light Switches - radley
http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/floorplan_light_swit.html
======
paulgerhardt
I love "Design of Everyday Things" but this floor plan light switch design
always irratated me.

Essentially you are sacrificing a high efficiency, low cognitive load task
(that happens to have a poor first time experience) for a complex glossy UI
that is intuitive but high cognitive load. (Suddenly you have to engage your
visual system and import your full object recognition library where previously
it was a finger twitch task.)

We've struggled with this a lot at Lockitron. My personal belief is repetive
actions (locking/unlocking) should be mechanically efficient while complex
actions (inviting guests) should be more visually intuitive.

For another light switch concept see the Goldee.

~~~
jwr
I don't like it either, but for a different reason. This is an example of
narrow thinking: let's solve an immediate issue, rather than rethink the whole
problem from the ground up.

How often do you need to control a single light that is in a different place
than where you stand?

The problem is not with the light switch UI, it's with the whole concept of
manually controlling every single light in the house. Why can't we have
lighting that senses where we are and adapts accordingly? Why can't our lights
go off when we lock the door?

Rather than get excited about a conceptually complex light switch, I'd like to
see a home lighting system that doesn't require one in the first place.

~~~
whyme
To me this is one of those examples where you might re-think the whole problem
from the ground up, then take a step back when realizing the absolute solution
is not the perfect solution.

Take for example, the clap-it lights; while yes it requires less effort than
walking over and flicking the switch, it's also extremely annoying to do.
Likewise, I would get really annoyed when lights go on and off according to
where I walk.

Of course I don't have a Nest either and yet it does fill a need for some
people.

------
Domenic_S
> _Why not arrange the switches on a floor plan of the space, so it would be
> easy to determine which switch worked which light?_

Because our current binary model of "flip this switch, this light comes on" is
dumb. We want lighting "scenarios", not control of individual bulbs/small
clusters of bulbs.

What you should be solving for is these lighting scenarios, for example "I
walk to walk from my bedroom to the kitchen and I want the pathway lit" (this
is called pathway lighting). Or "I want ambient light in the living room
appropriate for movie watching", or "I want the nightlights turned on."

Believe it or not this is already (kind of) solved with what's called Lighting
Control Systems [0]. They're complicated, expensive, and I've only seen them
on very, very expensive homes.

Supposedly the price is coming down, who knows. I think affordable consumer-
grade is going to be an internet-of-things kind of solution.

[0] [http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Residential-Commercial-
Solutions...](http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Residential-Commercial-
Solutions/Pages/Residential-Solutions/WholeHomeSolutions.aspx)

~~~
nitrogen
My own approach to this from a few years ago is to have a system that tries to
determine what you want to do and adjusts the lights accordingly, while
allowing manual override for the times it gets it wrong:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7jeJSdJPpk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7jeJSdJPpk)

~~~
bemmu
That's awesome. Our simple system is just to have motion detector bulbs in the
hallway and bathroom, which is where you usually want lights to turn on when
there are people moving in those spaces.

~~~
gbog
I hate lights on motion (or sound) detectors. What if you want to stay there
for while, maybe talking with a guest, or reading some paper? Or maybe you
want to hook something on the wall?

Well placed switches are good enough, no?

~~~
nitrogen
Me too, which is why I used the Kinect, which detects presence without motion,
even in the dark.

~~~
ElliotH
That's awesome, have you considered blogging about your setup?

~~~
nitrogen
I have indeed: [http://blog.mikebourgeous.com/2011/03/08/home-automation-
and...](http://blog.mikebourgeous.com/2011/03/08/home-automation-and-lighting-
control-with-kin/)

Hope you find it informative :-)

------
noonespecial
In all of the houses I've lived in here in the USA, its worse. Electricians
literally don't care what order the switches are wired. The just grab wires
and start adding switches. This results in the switch for the light you want
to use often being farthest from the light on the panel. Mostly, its just
random. It usually dives me nuts until I reorder them.

~~~
rbritton
It's even worse when they put enough lights on a circuit that the first person
to turn on a hair dryer without shutting most of them off blows the circuit
breaker.

~~~
miahi
That's just incorrect wiring from my point of view; I don't know the US
regulations, but you shouldn't mix lights and power sockets on the same
circuit. Lights should have their own circuit breaker, of less amps than a
socket circuit.

~~~
rbritton
I agree, but to my knowledge it's fully legal in most areas. I'm thankful I
caught them putting my office on the same circuit and fixed it. One of my
printers alone draws 13 amps while printing. I just wish I would've looked
into the rest of the house when I found the office wiring.

~~~
DanBC
Wait what? What kind of printer do you have?

~~~
yardie
Probably one of those Xerox documentcenters. Printing is sort of a misnomer as
it can also bind, staple, fold, envelope, sort and duplex.

When I used to work in prepress the printer we had was as long as a truck,
used 480V, and had it's own fume hood to capture all the ozone it put out.

------
strictfp
Why put all switches in one place? I have never seen this in Europe. Switches
are usually close to their corresponding light source.

~~~
sirsar
If you have multiple smaller lights, it's quicker to turn them all on at the
door than to do a lap around the room.

Of course this is an after-the-fact rationalization; in reality, it's probably
just easier to install one set of switches than several.

~~~
alexchamberlain
Again, why one switch one light? In my lounge, the 1 lightswitch turns on 4
lights, and in my hallway, there is 2 lightswitches for 1 light.

~~~
__david__
Well, you do that if you ever want the ability to turn on just one of them. If
you don't then your setup is fine.

------
msutherl
I recently designed a laboratory and, inspired by having read Donald Norman's
anecdote, tried to have the contractors match the switch layout to the
position of lights on the ceiling. The result was an extremely ugly array of
2x3 separate panels that are mapped properly, but in the reverse order of what
you would expect. I am now always turning on the light at the end of the lab
when I want the one that is above me. I'm not sure it's any better than a
linear array.

So much for that.

~~~
lstamour
Was it more horizontally laid out or not? The original goal was to orient the
switches so that, somewhat horizontally mapped to the same coordinates, you
would see a clear marking of where you are and be able to turn on lights "in
front" of you or "behind you". So if your finger started from the "You are
here" dot, flipping the switch closest to it would turn on the light nearest
you. Alternatively, perhaps you could put a symbol or distinguishing feature
on the light switch you hit most often to indicate that it's not the one you
want. E.g. a window, room feature, or label the door?

~~~
msutherl
No, they are vertical. An horizontal layout was not an option in this case.
Not a bad idea to include labels – thanks for that!

------
raldi
I've found two switches in a panel to be reasonably memorable, three in a row
to be just over the border into confusion, and four or more right out.

Fortunately, all the places in my home that had more than two were places
where you could control both interior and exterior circuits. My solution was
to use black switches for the exterior lights and white for the interior.
Like, a single panel might have a black and two whites, or a pair of each. I
find it much more intuitive that way.

------
newbrict
Just yesterday I was thinking about how to solve this exact problem, this is a
great solution. However it takes a lot of effort to get switched like that
made.

~~~
nitrogen
_However it takes a lot of effort to get switched like that made._

It would probably be cheaper just to use a touchscreen, and the switches could
be updated if the room changes.

~~~
BrandonMarc
Plus, there are economies of scale: that same device can be used for just
about every room / configuration, instead of having to create 100's of unique
versions of the thing.

~~~
qq66
The hoped-for outcome for 3D printing is that it will bring the cost of a
custom faceplate to maybe 5x times that of a generic faceplate instead of
100x. Of course the hardest part would be the software to turn the room layout
into a 3D printed faceplate.

------
Zigurd
I have to wonder why more than one commenter states a preference for lighting
"scenarios" versus a visual representation of "what's where."

I'm one of those people who can't be bothered to fiddle with my Eclipse
perspectives even though I'm sure I could summon twenty strong opinions here
on why I should. Do you really think people (excluding single men under thirty
left to their own devices to configure a dwelling) will compose "lighting
scenarios" for their homes?

Having a map of light status and location in my entryway and on my mobile
devices would be sweet. No labelling. Program it once and it's good until the
walls move.

In particular, I don't think this has "high cognitive load." To me it looks
like a toddler could get "touch the place and the thing happens there."

------
btgeekboy
The design quickly fails when lights are not segmented out by location, but by
type. For example, if you have accent lighting that goes around the top of the
room, and then pathway lighting on the bottom, where does it show up on a 2D
floorplan?

------
tmslnz
This is how it should be done. No doubt.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/designunits/8413499081/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/designunits/8413499081/)

------
mhb
Are there really many locations in a conventional house layout which can
afford to devote the floor space this requires? Having this stick out from the
wall is a huge problem. If the house has enough space for that not to be an
issue the owners probably already have an expensive lighting control system
with labels by the push buttons indicating the type of lighting to use.

Look at the illustration and imagine how many times residents and guests walk
into that thing. Maybe v2.0 flips down or something but that's a whole other
problem.

~~~
sp332
Look at the bottom of the article, the newer version doesn't stick out. More
pics [http://www.yankodesign.com/2011/03/02/know-your-
switches/](http://www.yankodesign.com/2011/03/02/know-your-switches/)

~~~
mhb
Right. But in Norman's original description there was a significant emphasis
on the horizontal orientation:

 _the switches should be placed on a horizontal plane_

------
fit2rule
I have a better design than this. It centers around the idea of having the
light switch, itself, be near the zone of light that it operates. So instead
of having a large panel of switches, we simply pair the switch with the light
bulb. This means - revolutionary, I know - that the switch is itself in the
same room/area as the light that it provides.

Also, the switches themselves have little lamps in them, so you can find them
in the dark.

Problem solved!

------
viggity
This is incredibly cool. I'm consulting for a company right now that does
Power over Ethernet Lighting to enable fine grain control of lighting
scenarios. I've definitely shared this link with the team. If anyone is
interested in checking us out, www.igor-tech.com. My email is in my profile if
you'd like to contact.

We don't have lcd touch screen switches yet, but it is certainly on the radar.

------
upofadown
Now that we have light sources that can produce a small amount of light
efficiently (LEDs) we don't really need that many lights built into the
structure anyways. People can function in really really dim light. Just light
up the whole building slightly all the time. You end up needing just the task
lights and those are better controlled with switches at the place the light is
used.

