This page shows the current progress for the immersive umbrella concept with Kassie. It highlights some of the inspirations, the current version of the prototype, and some ideas for projects!

Inspiration + Prior Work

Kassie has long been fascinated with umbrellas an an underutilised medium for art. They are so integrated into everyday life, yet only remain functional. She has a vision for them as the keystone for artistic pieces, enable outdoor rainy-day art, as well as a means to interact more playfully with the world. She has worked with umbrellas as the target for projection mapping, as you can see in the images and videos below.

I am inspired by modern RPG quest markers. They are designed to guide the player through virtual environments, and I love the idea of the umbrella facilitating your daily quests, and to guide you home when the weather is bleak.

Current Prototype

The system adds a layer of gamification to exploration, making it a fun way to discover new places. While it’s a delight to use outdoors, especially in open areas, the reliance on GPS does mean it struggles indoors or in areas with weak satellite signals. Despite this limitation, it’s been an exciting way to combine technology and creativity while experimenting with real-world navigation tools.

This prototype uses a combination of GPS, gyroscopes, accelerometers, and an LED strip for direction indicators. By illuminating specific parts of the LED strip, the umbrella provides subtle yet effective quest markers to guide the user to their next destination.

The video on the right is using a combination of a GPS and a compass to use an LED pointing towards my hometown of Cirencester, UK. Despite being nearly 6000 miles away it was comforting to see a little light looking home. I also explore with patterns using the addressable LEDs map to the umbrella, as can be seen in the lower video. We also found  an LED umbrella in the wild, but it was purely a visual enhancement and was incredibly heavy! Not for daily questing!