DIY Projects, Communities and Cultures

We want to hear from you about Do It Yourself projects, cultures, and communities. Let your opinion matter! As researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, we are conducting a brief 10 min survey to further our understanding of DIY projects and communities. In the name of science (and for fun) please complete the survey located at the website below:

http://tinyurl.com/DIYCommunities

We hope to share the collected data at the end of the study. We thank you for your time and effort.

 

Visualizing Public Water Use

This project aims to raise public awareness about water use. Working together with Eric Paulos I developed a low-cost water flow sensor to be installed at water facilities around the Carnegie Mellon University campus and gather data about public water consumption. This information will bevisualized in order to motivate conservative and sustainable water use.

 

A step-by-step tutorial for making this sensor has been featured by instructables.com, with a publication forthcoming at the CHI DIY Workshop. Check out the video demo of the project.

 

 

Haptic Memory Cues

Many people experience difficulty recalling and recognizing information during everyday tasks. Prior assistive technology for human memory has leveraged audio and video cues, but this approach is often disruptive and inappropriate in socially-sensitive situations. Our work explores vibro-tactile feedback as an alternative that unobtrusively aids human memory.

 

Working with Scott Hudson and Anind Dey, I developed a prototype that will eventually result in a context-aware wearable device that augments human memory with haptic cues. Our preliminary work will be presented at Pervasive 2009.

 

Environmental Bike Sensing

This is a brand new project at the Living Environments Lab with Paul Shen and Eric Paulos. We hope to develop low-cost air quality sensors distributed and powered by bikes, culminating in a real-time visualization of air quality data throughout Pittsburgh.