Circle Status is a smart lamp and companion app that turns passive outage detection into active community connection. Built in 15 weeks as part of the University of Michigan's Integrated Product Development (IPD) program, it launched at a 200-person trade show and sold 264 units in three days.
When the power goes out, neighbors are often the fastest source of help, yet most people have no simple way to know who is affected or who needs a hand. Existing outage maps are passive and slow, and they say nothing about the people on your street.
A lamp that glows to signal outage status at a glance, paired with an app that lets neighbors check in on each other, share resources, and coordinate during an outage. The physical object makes the state of the community ambient; the app turns it into action.
Interviews and field research shaped the core insights, which were reframed as "how might we" questions and tested through rapid prototyping of both the hardware form and the app flows. Iterations focused on clarity of the light states and on reducing the effort needed to reach out to a neighbor.
Designing a physical product and its app together showed how much an ambient signal can lower the barrier to social action.