Six steps from a question to LYS
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THE QUESTION
It started under fluorescent lights
Working late at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art on an Intel brief about modern urban life, I sat beneath rows of fluorescent tubes: bright, static and blind to the time of day.
We spend most of our lives under artificial light, yet rarely treat it as part of our health the way we treat sleep, movement or nutrition.
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THE DISCOVERY
Important knowledge, hidden in plain sight
The work of Professor Russell Foster and other scientists showed that the timing, intensity and spectrum of light shape our body clocks, sleep and health.
The science existed—but mostly inside academia, and rarely outside controlled lab conditions.
The question was how to bring it into everyday life.
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FIRST EXPERIMENT
A pair of glasses for the night shift
Our first concept was a pair of electrochromic glasses for nurses on night shifts, with lenses that changed during the shift.
Instead of asking the body to adapt to static lighting, what if light adapted to the person?
Light should be connected to people—not only to rooms.
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PERSONAL LIGHT
Imagining light that knows who it is for
An art and technology installation imagined a future in which light is connected to the individual and changes as their needs change through the day.
It also revealed the core challenge: before light can respond, it has to understand what a person is actually experiencing.
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THE SENSOR
To change light, we first had to measure it
People don’t stay at fixed points in a room. Through Imperial College London’s Althea programme, the first wearable LYS sensor took shape.
It captures personal light exposure over time—for researchers, for designers, and as feedback for lighting that responds.
The sensor made an invisible part of the day visible.
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BECOMING LYS
Taking the idea into the real world
In 2016 we launched the sensor on Kickstarter, and the project became LYS.
Since then, LYS sensors have supported research in more than 55 countries—in homes, workplaces, hospitals and field studies.
What happens when light becomes connected to the person—not only the space?
