Turbino
A data physicalisation of wind speed with Arduino Uno
Presented at UTS Tech Festival 2022
Data visualisations as we know them can only display data over flat surfaces, thus limiting our abilities to perceive the data in varying dimensions. Physicalising the data is an alternative way to represent data patterns and put an emphasis on the physical perception of the information. Unlike traditional data visualisations, Turbino offers a multidimensional perspective on data and is a bourgeoning approach to data representations.
Turbino is a physical interface representing wind speeds recorded on Global Wind day from UTS FEIT weather station. The prototype is a miniature model of a wind turbine whose rotation speed and helixes physically represent variations in wind speed.
Design process
This project started with the definition of a problem statement and the identification of an opportunity for design. In the area of data representation, visualisations such as line charts, bar charts, or pie charts are a very common way to represent data. However, those traditional data visualisations only utilise our sense of sight thus restricting us in how we perceive and understand information. Besides, visualisations can often appear obscure to most people, therefore, making data analysis an unappealing field for non-knowledgeable people.
The design challenge we were willing to tackle was to create a physical interface that would allow to explore wind data. The problem we were aiming to solve was to make data easier to grasp, to allow non-knowledgeable people to make their own interpretation of data patterns, and to increase people’s general interest in data.
We defined our problem space into some How might we statements:
How might we make complex data more intelligible?
How might we increase people’s interest and curiosity in data?
How might we create an engaging and physical experience through a representation of data?
For this project, an Arduino Uno board was used to load the wind data and control the different actuators and sensors. The Arduino board was connected to a Grove base shield which allowed us to easily attach the different components to the microcontroller.
In the scope of this project, we solely aimed at the development of a prototype. Therefore, at this stage, the data records were hardcoded into an array through which the program would iterate automatically. However, we imagine that future versions of Turbino would involve a real-time reading of wind speed, using a web scraping method to retrieve data directly from the weather station website and to display it as it is recorded.
The prototype includes three servo motors to action the helixes of the turbine in an opening motion. The turbine also rotates on its own axis thanks to a DC motor located at the base of the turbine’s pillar. The data records were mapped to different ranges to suit the servos and DC motor ranges.
The turbine components were 3D printed. The turbine is composed of three helixes placed at equal distance from each other around the central pillar. Each helix is attached to a servo motor and rotates to create an opening and closing motion. This aims to create the impression of the turbine expanding as if to take in more wind or shrinking when low wind levels are recorded.
Physical interaction was another essential aspect of this project and a major area of focus. The interaction method we judged most suitable for Turbino was an ultrasonic distance sensor that would allow users to interact with the prototype through physical movement while avoiding direct contact with the device. The distance sensor has a detection range of 50 cm, in order to limit the effect of unwanted noise data.
As a hand is detected by the sensor, the turbine stops turning and the helixes match the position of the hand above the device. This provides feedback on the user’s action, allowing them to notice when their interaction is being recorded and to easily make sense of the device movements. The hand position detected by the distance sensor is used to select a particular data record corresponding to a specific time of day. The turbine then changes to display the wind speed recorded at that time. That way, the user is given the ability to explore the dataset at their leisure.
User study
User studies were conducted to collect user feedback on the prototype and identify potential areas of improvements. The study consisted of an observation and a desirability test.
During the first part of the study, participants were asked to observe, interact and play with Turbino while describing their thoughts and feelings out loud. The aim was to evaluate whether the users could make sense of the data physicalisation and interact with the device accurately. At first, the participants were not given any information about the prototype to make their reaction as genuine as possible. We wanted to simulate the interaction of someone who sees Turbino for the very first time. After 10 minutes of observation, we then revealed to the participants the purpose and mechanisms of Turbino, so that we could observe any changes in their interaction given the newly acquired knowledge they had received.
The second part of the study was a desirability test and aimed to evaluate the aesthetic value of Turbino. The participants were given a set of 24 cards, each with a different adjective written on it. They were asked to select the cards that best described their feelings towards the aesthetics of the prototype. Then, the same process was repeated with a slightly different set of cards that addressed the interactive aspect, and participants had to choose which adjectives depicted their feelings towards the interaction method of Turbino.
This project was a group work in collaboration with John Collins, John Joo, Andy Le, Alexander Ouyang and Ausama Yoshinaka
