Data for change #5

Having done this project alone, I did quite a few user testings and crits. In the first crit, it was clear that I was focusing a lot more on the navigation side of the App rather than the air pollution aspect of it so I had to make it more visible. These are things I added:

• AQI indicator in the corner which changes in value and colour based on your location. Therefore, the text at the bottom with the written explanation of the air pollution levels has visual support.
• When expanding the bottom bar you can click onto one of the main contributing gases of air pollution and read about them but also see a data visualization of how much that gas contributes to air pollution divided in four boxes of severity presented by the intensity of the blue with the range above it.
• When provided with a route, you can have chosen from quickest to least polluting to the least polluted route.
  The icon for information turned white rather than a dark colour to be more noticeable. When going onto the Information page not only would you see news headlines but also FAQ related to air pollution below.
• When on your journey notifications of for example the next electric bus will appear at the top encouraging the user to take a better mode of transport for their journey.
• On the menu, what is seen as activity now was called trips history, only showing your trips history but now shows today’s, this week, this months data is visualised and ordered from highest to lowest of the mode of transport you were using at that time as well as a message below relating to your health of how it’s impacting you. In 2019, according to Cavillo, N. and Garnett, E.” The visibility of these data is considered crucial for citizens to manage their own health, and a proliferation of new informational forms and apps have been created to achieve this”. For which underneath is a short, one-line summary related to your health based on the data gathered on your trips of today’s, this week, or this month.

Taking on board everything people suggested made the App more clear that it was related to Air pollution. “Hall [20] discusses the danger of a purely design-led approach, as the most interesting relations between two datasets, for example, are often semantic, not structural. While the goal of scientific research is knowledge, the goal of design is the production of artefacts; knowledge is thus a means for design, and an end for science [40]”. (Cavillo, N. and Garnett, E, p.134, 2014)

Reference:

Cavillo, N. and Garnett, E (2019)Data intimacies: Building infrastructures for intensified embodied encounters with air pollution. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026119830575

Walker, K and Von Ompteda, K.(2014) PhysicSpace: From Quantum to Human Scale. Available from: https://visap.uic.edu/2014/papers/14_Walker_PhysicSpace_VISAP2014.pdf