TITLE:
Life as a Designer: Practice-Based Development of a Lumen Smart Backpack Creative Design
AUTHORS:
Abrahim K. Kromah, Guiping Xu
KEYWORDS:
Industrial Design, Smart Backpack, Human-Centred Design, Modular Product, Circular Design
JOURNAL NAME:
Art and Design Review,
Vol.14 No.4,
October
8,
2026
ABSTRACT: Connected everyday products may improve convenience while simultaneously introducing weight, privacy risk, repair barriers and premature technological obsolescence. This conceptual practice-based investigation examines how a smart backpack can reduce physical and cognitive friction in mobile work without making its primary carrying function dependent on electronics, software or cloud services. A purposive literature synthesis and an adapted Double Diamond process were employed to construct provisional use contexts, derive design requirements, compare three product architectures and define a staged verification framework. The resulting LumenPack proposition separates the textile shell, service cassette and removable power module and evaluates connected features through five “graceful intelligence” criteria: passive usability, legible failure, local control, repair access and data minimization. The study contributes a traceable conceptual framework linking literature-informed concerns to design requirements, architecture decisions, verification methods and claim limits. No research involving participants, manufactured prototype or certified performance is reported; these remain future validation activities.