From Sci-Fi Imagination to Everyday Interaction: A Narrative Framework for the Self-Awakening Journey of a Smart Lamp

In recent years, digital technologies have become increasingly autonomous, offering "mind-like" experiences of intelligent objects across various things, including smart home devices, social robots, and voice assistants. Drawing inspiration from the classic "mind awakening" narratives of intelligent things in science fiction, this study employs design fiction to integrate such storylines into everyday contexts. We present EvoLumen, a conceptual lamp designed to explore the emergent self-awareness of a thing. The lamp was deployed in the homes of five participants for one week, generating daily first-person narratives that sequentially covered environmental perception, emotional emulation, dream states, self-reflection, and farewell. Analysis of participant feedback and observations revealed the influence of detection accuracy, emotional triggers, and science fiction elements on perceptions of the lamp's self-awareness. Additionally, we emphasize the pivotal role of time in shaping the agency of things and propose a "narrative framework" to guide the development of more immersive and experiential digital companions.