There are many ways to visualise data, charts - bar, pie, line - through film, report document, taking a physical approach as I did for Pollution Powder. I decided to represent my data through augmented reality. I had never done anything through AR before, and as it's an emerging technology, I really wanted to expose myself to it as I felt it would make for a really good portfolio project as I proceed into my career and apply to design jobs. I feel it's important to have a project which is really out there and future-aware.
I also felt my rationale for AR made a lot of sense. Since I am exposing the *hidden* communications our devices have, a way to turn these intangible elements into something tangible digitally could be through AR, and since communication is the element, I felt having animations of communication surrounding IoT devices whilst there are in the usual locations would make for a good AR project.
I began constructing my brief as I commenced my initial research stage. After reading about the topic of IoT devices and smart home surveillance and privacy, this is the first draft of my brief:
Overview
As smart home technology develops, privacy issues surrounding them do too, but often go unnoticed by the general consumer. Expose these issues through an engaging way.
Context
Smart technology has been around of quite a while now, we have had access to smartphones since the mid-2000s. Now we are seeing a rapid increase in the smart home, with smart gadgets being released by the top technology companies such as speakers, TVs, lighting and even microwaves.
‘The current industry vision of an IoT-enabled world is one that creates a more convenient, secure, intelligent, and personalized experience. While this seems to be an achievable vision, the reality of IoT is sometimes different’.
Research
Conducting your own research is important. Find out how vulnerable you are to these issues. Since the number of people who could possibly be impacted by this issue is increasing every day, it may prove more useful to conduct some secondary research.
Form
There are many tools which aim to surveillance these IoT devices. IoT Inspector developed by researchers at Princeton University does a good job at this and provides you data from your IoT devices which could be useful. Think about how you could represent this data, maybe through data visualisation or a research document. However, think of forms that link closely to the medium you are investigating.
Scope
You have four weeks to conduct your research and present them in an appropriate manner. The project should be close to finished, to a point where it can be used as though it’s a final product so you can conduct some user testing and gain valuable feedback.
Tools & Methods
Conduct some research to find other useful tools to explore these issues. You could conduct primary research to judge for yourself if this issue is as apparent of consumers.
At this stage, I have decided to focus on the number of bytes entering the device, laving the device, the locations of the serves the device is communicating with, whether the data is secured HTTPS or unsecured HTTP. I now need to brainstorm visual methods of presenting this data, bearing in mind the constraints of a-frame.
Bibliography List:
A-Frame. (2019). A-Frame – Make WebVR. Available at: https://aframe.io/ (Accessed: 22 November 2019).
Reynolds, M. (2018). How IKEA's future-living lab created an augmented reality hit. Available at: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ikea-place-augmented-reality-app-space-10 (Accessed: 22 November 2019).
Macworld (2019). The 10 best augmented reality apps for iPhone. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuO31Ro2ypg (Accessed: 22 November 2019).
Iot-inspector.princeton.edu. (2019). Our smart devices are watching us. Available at: https://iot-inspector.princeton.edu/ (Accessed: 22 November 2019).
IKEA (2017). Say Hej to IKEA Place. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UudV1VdFtuQ (Accessed: 22 November 2019).
Etienne, A. (2017). Augmented Reality in 10 Lines of HTML. Available at: https://medium.com/arjs/augmented-reality-in-10-lines-of-html-4e193ea9fdbf (Accessed: 22 November 2019).
Alexandra Etienne (2017). Augmented Reality in 10 lines of HTML. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_Uj0C8sMi4 (Accessed: 22 November 2019).
Alexandra Etienne (2017). A-Frame First Steps: Boilerplate basic scene. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFv55TajSAg (Accessed: 22 November 2019).
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