TrendInspector
Background
In order to keep up to date and make the necessary
decisions within the prioritized environment and energy areas, more
exact and detailed knowledge about our surroundings is needed today than ever before. This
circumstance combined with the fact that decisions makers and stake
holders often have a background in economics or politics rather than
science creates a strong need for the basic data for decision-making
being presented in an understandable and unambiguous way.
We now enter an era where we will increasingly build our knowledge from web data streams or from fine grain sensor grids. This means we can receive fast and detailed information about our surroundings - as long as we are capable of interpreting the streams, and turn them into knowledge.
The Trend Inspector project encompasses developing an
interactive table for cooperation around the trends within energy and
sustainability. The table will be placed in a demonstration environment
with a distincly domestic flavour. Guests will gather around this table
to discuss emergent sustainability technology, and will at the same time
be able to access trends and information easily and intuitively.
Expression
We have put a lot
effort into trying to find the right expression for the table both
physically and content-wise. The resulting artefact is for example not
meant to be neutral and "fit in anywhere", but rather form an argument
or statement by being different and carrying its own integrity.
Its target use is by a small group of collaborators, although the individual user has to be able to reach the displays, move information, and participate in and get an overview of the group's interaction.
The table will of course also function as a real coffee table
(nice looking, flat and withstanding liquids). In contrast to MS
Surface, Reactable, the design uses multiple displays, in order to
separate functionality and to create the "carbon footprint" shape.
Construction
The table is constructed as a thin surface box using 22 mm MDF board with beveled edges. This box, containing the four overlapping LED screens, computers, sensors, and speakers, has a high gloss Ferrari red finish. The screens are covered by thick elliptical Plexiglas discs"
Crowdsourcing
The
process "Crowdsourcing", identifying emerging trends in the behaviour
of large groups, is the identification of numerous, each in themselves
unimportant signals, and collating them into a coherent whole. Based on
statistical methodology and on the notion of "wisdom of crowds" - the
idea that a group of people through their behaviour may reveal more than
individuals can, crowdsourcing has been successfully applied to tasks
in information access and market analysis.
Trends can be detected on a small scale, e.g. on an individual
or a specific level. A specific behaviour which earlier has been of
some certain character may change and evolve into something different.
This may be noticeable to even a casual observer, and a dedicated device
is obviously well geared towards detection of change or anomaly of this
type.
More interesting is the detection of minute changes over a
large population: changes which may not be obvious to even the
individuals subject to it. If a large proportion of the population
change their preferences even slightly, this may have enormous impact.
Content
We will here put this technology into use for detecting
emergent behaviour in respect to energy issues. In our case this relates
to looking at trends by analyzing very large amounts of user data, e.g.
all searches made with the Google search engine, and how they vary over
time. Another more real-time source we use is twitter, extracting
entries containing keywords and links and then ranking these. The result
is connected to a visualization and interaction framework for multiple
displays.
Interaction
The interaction is based around phicons, physical icons, in our case real coffee mugs, which can be moved around and rotated. Instead of coffee, these mugs are "filled with" an infrared pattern, detectable by cameras modified for the infrared spectrum. Above the coffee table, there is a hanging lamp, containing the camera tracking the movements of the mugs as well as speakers. The first sensing layer of the software, uses the ReacTIVision video processing software developed by the Popeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain.
All of the interaction is enveloped in a rich audio environment, containing both background sounds as well as interaction feedback on the theme of "turbulent states and convergence".
Interaction scenario:
One of
the three "parameter mugs" standing upside down next to the screens is
turned over (and thereby turned on) and placed on the big "main" screen.
As it is detected by the overhead camera, angular selection graphics
appear around the mug. By turning the mug handle, time period,
geographical area, and topic can be selected with the three mugs. As a
fourth "result" mug is placed close to the other mugs, it is "filled"
with a search result showing the selectable most popular search terms
for the selected parameters and their internal relationship. Adding more
result mugs will successively refine the search. As a result mug is
moved close to the small screens additional information is shown on
these. One screen displays the popularity trend for the topic/searchterm
as a graph for the selected time period; the next screen shows the
search terms with the fastest increasing popularity for the
topic/searchterm; the last screen shows the most referenced web pages
linked from the latest twitter entries containing the search terms.
Presentation
and Acknowledgments
The Trend Inspector coffee table was first
presented at the Swedish National Energy Convention, March 16th-17th
2010 at Stockholm Exhibition Hall.
The Trends Inspector project was
funded by the Swedish Energy Agency