Manzil: An Interactive Data Visualization Project Exploring Everyday Spaces

Abstract

This paper intricately documents every moment, that is from the point of realization for the creation to an Arduino-based situated display based on IoT and tangible interactions as a result of movement-based triggers. A classroom project turned pseudo-reality, through ethnomethodology it has been put on record the evolution of research by devoting attention to the observation of commonplaces that are more or less taken for granted in everybody's routines and how on a ride to enrich that experience the team landed on various abstractions that work on collectively producing pillars of social situations. From here on the paper will shape its way from an introduction about situated displays and why the study went ahead with it for their classroom project, to how a story was composed around the mentioned display. Later, an intricate discussion about the implementation, with regards to the Arduino, the permutation combination was put into figuring out the best channels to power the hardware required. Following that, the study focuses on ordinary methods that ordinary people use to analyze their response to a given stimulus. Exploring various variables to analyze positive and negative reactions and building onto a worthwhile experience during the span of a flight of stairs was the most intricately implemented part of the whole project which came right after. Project Manzil is way beyond a public display yet has a horizon to cross ahead in terms of data visualization, and this paper from here on chronicles the journey to reaching a full mount public/situated display for the college.