SociaLIGHT

Starting conversations with strangers is often avoided not because people do not want to connect, but because the effort of starting feels higher than the effort of staying silent. Social media has made it easy to find common ground before a conversation starts: shared interests, mutual connections, personal traits all visible before the first word. In person, that context disappears.

SociaLIGHT is a wearable system designed to bring that context back into the room. Users select a conversation prompt reflecting a personal trait, behavior, or interest, mapped to a color state, then transfer it to the wearable with a single NFC tap. The device displays that state on a quadrant layout others can read at a glance.

Built as a Human Factors and Mechanical Engineering thesis project, the system was evaluated across two prototype iterations, with task completion improving from 33% to 100% and programming time reduced by approximately 83%. In a live behavioral study with 21 participants, those wearing the device reported a significantly greater desire to reconnect with people they met, suggesting the wearable supported connection intent beyond the session itself.

The complete thesis is available through ProQuest:

I owned the project end to end, from concept through deployment. I designed the system, prototyped and assembled about 30 wearable devices, wrote the embedded firmware, designed the study, obtained IRB approval, recruited participants, facilitated sessions, and analyzed the results. Pilot behavior and hardware issues directly shaped later design and firmware decisions.

I also redesigned the system architecture between iterations, transitioning from a multi-device QR-based workflow to a single-device NFC interaction to simplify setup and improve reliability.

Early iteration — NFC stickers embedded in laminated paper prompt cards

Final system — wooden prompt holder with attached cards, sleeker form factor

SociaLIGHT demonstrated that a wearable system can meaningfully influence how people connect in person. Participants wearing the device reported a significantly greater desire to reconnect with people they met, and interaction quality remained more stable across rounds compared to the control group.

The system shifted the challenge from deciding what to say to deciding who to approach, a meaningful change in how people navigated social interactions. That shift points directly to the next design direction: making social receptivity visible, not just personal attributes.

The project spanned the full design and engineering arc: concept, hardware iteration, embedded firmware, IRB-approved study design, live deployment, and quantitative analysis. It produced a system that went from 33% task completion to 100% across two prototype iterations and generated statistically significant behavioral findings in a live social study.