This week I’ve worked on the interface of my air quality vest. I must say I couldn’t decide on how to solve the design of the button and the actual display.
The ‘button’ is my way to interact with the sensors. By indicating if it smells good or bad. The system will measure and send the air quality values when I use the button. But what should the button look like? Thinking really hard I decided I wanted to somehow duplicate the movements you make in real life if it smell good or bad. So opening or squeezing the nostrils. In clothes I suppose the equivalent would be opening or closing a zipper. And that’s how my ‘button’ has turned out.
An even bigger challenge is the actual display. How am I going to visualize the sensor data? I took a look at my earlier experiments and actually started build some dummy examples. Some were plain boring, others too far fetched. Then it was easy to see the I’m going to go for the ‘stain’ metaphor. The visual is interesting. I want to line up three circles in different colours. While working I decided to add a scale in silver reflective strip. It’s informative and aesthetical as well.
