1. Canary has taken flight

    Introducing Canary: a mobile application that tracks and offsets your digital carbon footprint. Visit canaryinthecloud.com for more information.

  2. Watch our live presentations, May 12th.

    Watch my classmates and I present our thesis work live at the SVA Theatre in New York City, 11am-4pm on May 12th. 

  3. This weekend I got some help from Sara Dierck and Tash Wong making the packaging for the SVA IxD Festival and Exhibition takeaways: test tubes. Instead of describing the carbon footprint of our data in terms of weight (pounds or grams), I’m using volume and using empty test tubes to communicate the concept. For example, Google estimated that a search produces 0.2 grams of CO2 which is equal to approximately 100mL - weight of air versus volume of air. By comparison, a resting human breath on average is 500mL or five Google searches.

  4. My process book is now available for digital reading and hard copies will be arriving soon. While I am still working on my thesis deliverables (this being one of them) and final presenation, I pulled another all-nighter with fellow classmate and taxi buddy Chris Cannon to finish up the content/layout for my process book and send it to Blurb for publishing. My goal was to get it ready for our exhibition on May 12th so I had to put content on lock down, even though coversations and work today has already rendered my book outdated. Oh, c’est la thesis.

    My process book is now available for digital reading and hard copies will be arriving soon. While I am still working on my thesis deliverables (this being one of them) and final presenation, I pulled another all-nighter with fellow classmate and taxi buddy Chris Cannon to finish up the content/layout for my process book and send it to Blurb for publishing. My goal was to get it ready for our exhibition on May 12th so I had to put content on lock down, even though coversations and work today has already rendered my book outdated. Oh, c’est la thesis.

  5. Just finished designs for Canary: an iPhone app that tracks your digital content production and subsequent CO2 emissions. First flight is May 12, 2012.

    Just finished designs for Canary: an iPhone app that tracks your digital content production and subsequent CO2 emissions. First flight is May 12, 2012.

  6. I’ve been working on designing Canary’s iPhone app screens. Here’s a sneak peek of the offset screen for Instagram, displaying current and previous offsets with options to pay an offset immediately or setup a monthly autopay. I decided that every 100 grams of CO2 emissions would equal $0.10. For user uploading 50-60 pictures a month, he/she would have the option of paying $1.02 to a local carbon offset project for the month’s CO2 emissions.

    I’ve been working on designing Canary’s iPhone app screens. Here’s a sneak peek of the offset screen for Instagram, displaying current and previous offsets with options to pay an offset immediately or setup a monthly autopay. I decided that every 100 grams of CO2 emissions would equal $0.10. For user uploading 50-60 pictures a month, he/she would have the option of paying $1.02 to a local carbon offset project for the month’s CO2 emissions.

  7. Companies must look not only at how efficiently they are consuming electricity, but also the sources of electricity that they are choosing.

    — Greenpeace. Read the full report

  8. The process of my process

    I’ve reached a critical crossroads in my thesis work: the point at which this process blog, my final documentation (process book), and work on the Canary project are nearly parallel. I have three weeks left to finish multiple deliverables and time management now trumps any and all decisions. As a result, this will be the second to last entry of my thesis blog. My final entry will be a link to the live stream of our final presentations on May 12th.

    For the remaining time, I will be preparing:

    • Process Book - The keystone deliverable and documentation of all my work over the last year. I’ve completed nearly 2/3 of it and have to tighten up content as well as references/spelling, nevermind the documentation of the final project - Canary. The process book will also be the basis of my thesis defense presentation on April 25th.
    • Canary - I just finished my wireframes for the app (see below for details). I outlined my video and have identified five core user flows and screens to design. There still maybe time to revise my wireflows I created a few days ago, but this will be one of those “nice to haves”. Additionally, I must design and animate the key flows/screens to repurpose for the video, canary website, and final presentation.
    • Final Presentation - I outlined a draft version (v.2.0) of my final presentation, and will be presenting this version to my classmates on this Wednesday, April 18th.

    Thesis Exhibition - Immediately following our presentations at the SVA Theatre, we have a reception and exhibtion of our thesis work back at our studio. I outlined a sketch for the setup and talked takeaways with my cousin Sara who will be helping me out with design/production.

    Over this past week, I’m up to three cups o’ coffee (sometimes four) and wireframing/prototyping the Canary app. With a little help from my classmates, I quickly learned two awesome rapid prototyping tools for the iPhone: TAP and LiveView. Seriously, these are my new favorite applications. Using these new tools, I created some key screens, killed a few, modified others, and got ready for my a review with Mari Sheibley, lead design at Foursquare (thanks to Michael Yap for setting it up). The review went awesome and Mari gave me some super valuable feedback. Soon after, I met with Cooper to discuss our wireframes, stripping out features and complexity. After a solid weekend of work and a visit to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, I shored my wireframes and prepped for final designs.

    Before my review with Mari, I met with Liz to discuss the status and approach of my process book and takeaways for the thesis exhibition. I left the meeting feeling engerized and subsequently pulled an all nighter working on my process book. It felt great to check a few items off the deliverables list as well as work alongside a fellow IxD’ers late night in the studio.

  9. The Coal Button site is now live. Just remember: behind every click, there’s a little lump of coal.

    The Coal Button site is now live. Just remember: behind every click, there’s a little lump of coal.

  10. Adjacent Entities for Competitve Analysis: Introduction

    I have divided up “the competition” into six categories: Frameworks/APIs, Incoming/Outgoing Data Management, Environmental Visualizations, Backup & Cloud Management, and Electricity Consumption. They are charted along a Physical/Digital spectrum paired with six verticals: Practical vs. Abstract, Social vs. Individual, Real Time vs. Summary, Expert vs. Layman, Stationary vs. Mobile, Commercial vs. Residential. My thesis projects are added on each of the six main charts to illustrate their attributes. I also performed an audit of consumer labels (e.g. WindMade) and offset programs, but these categories are not mapped as they do not fit the selected cartesian axes.

    Of the few dozen entities, there are two projects that can be considered “direct competitors”, both student projects and in the Environmental Visualizations category: Mark Nystrom’s Carbon Emissions Project (2005) and Elwyn Murray’s Carbon Bytes (2011). As a public installation at the RISD MFA show, the Carbon Emissions Project sought to bring awareness around CO2 output, using 540 of black balloons to illustrate an individual’s carbon output per day (62 pounds). Carbon Bytes is an iPad app exploration of Mr.Murray, tracking personal online habits and consequences, such as hours online, downloads, and CO2 output.

    It should also be noted this is not a traditional competitive analysis nor fully inclusive of all products/services in any given category. Furthermore, this study is a soft science, and is an exploration of adjacent industries to determine mediums, audiences, techniques, and functionality that may apply to my own thesis projects.

    Practical vs. Abstract

    Natalie Jeremijenko creates amazing projects that expose the mystery of natural systems and use their process to illustrate our impact on the environment. While a few are conceptual and abstract, they serve as entry points to discussions around our relationship with nature. The purpose of my abstract projects are also to serve as a gateway around related topics: At Capacity on limitations of storage and bandwidth, Carry Your Cloud on storage as digital attics, Seed Cloud on signifying data creation, and the Coal Button on CO2 emissions from digital behavior.

    Social vs. Individual

    For my main thesis project, Cumulus Alpha, I want it to be easy-to-use, mobile, practical, and social; Berlin-based Changers and stateside OPower are doing all four. Changers is an innovative startup that sells portable solar panel units that can power personal electronics. Users can broadcast how much energy he/she has created as well as CO2 prevented from being released on their social networks. Likewise, OPower uses normative comparison whereby we compare our status with people similar to ourselves (friends, family), and want to “normalize” our behavior by comparison. Already implemented on their paper reports and online dashboard, OPower will also use normative comparison in their upcoming app, in partnership with Facebook and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

    Commercial vs. Residential

    The focus of my thesis is an individuals ability - based on environmental impact - to consciously produce, distribute, and dispose of digital content. In doing so, all of my projects and prototypes are under the Residential category. Social features such as normative comparison and real time feedback from physical devices are distinctive attributes that I will include in Cumulus Alpha.

    Real Time vs. Summary

    Unique to online behavior when to electrical consumption, we have the ability to track usage in real-time. With cloud-based service providers utilizing virtualization, they can determine if a server is about to crash due to a spike in online traffic, and shift that load to other servers. This capability is a dream for utilities: we all crank our air conditioners during peak-hours on hot summer days, leading to potential blackouts. While smart meters hold the promise of real-time electricity management, only 13%-18% of homes in the U.S. have them installed.

    Many of the physical devices such as Giles Belley’s EDF Semaphore and Energy Saving Adaptor signify electrical consumption in real time. While they are conceptual pieces, their abstract nature is surpassed by the practicality and function. In developing Cumulus Alpha, I hope to create an interface that offers real time utility while being aesthetically pleasing.

    Expert vs. Layman

    The majority of the entities I audited fall into the Layman category, as many are for residential use. Those in the Expert category are APIs; enterprise-scale software such as Cisco’s IOS NetFlow; and the Institute for Sustainable Communication, creating a framework of standards for the advertising industry. Meaningful change can occur from the top-down or the bottom-up, and I because prefer the latter, I hope to create awareness and provide tools for individual users to become advocates for sustainably powered cloud-based services and products. Easy-to-use products such as OPower’s Social Energy App and Simple Energy’s Social Game are accessible with a Facebook Connect, intended for the majority. My abstract concepts intend to follow the STATIC! Power Aware Cord’s simplicity.

    Stationary vs. Mobile

    Many of the traditional forms for electricity and data monitoring and communicating environmental impact are stationary. However, traditional forms such as the electric bill are highly portable, but are a summary of activity. Recently developed applications from OPower, Efficiency 2.0, and Simple Energy can be access through a smart phone, but the content - electricity use - is still in a summarized format. One new product on the market, the Nest thermostat, allows for users to control heating and cooling from a mobile app. While a few of my prototypes and projects fall in the Stationary category, my main project will be an iPhone app allowing for remote access and action.