The Counter

OPPORTUNITY SPACE

Oftentimes, students go to places to study, only to find that they're full. This is a unique problem pertaining to Hunt Library because there are four floors, leaving our stragglers to the mercy of stairs or elevators. What if there was an easy way to find out if there is room to stay? We present to you: the Counter. :)

SOLUTION

Our team made a counter for finding out the fullness capacity of a floor in Hunt.

TECHNOLOGY

The capacity is determined by two sensors on either side of the door. This would be done by adding one to the counter if a person go in the room and subtracting one from the counter if people go out.

VISUAL DISPLAY

The output itself would have three categories in the form of a tree. When the room is fuller, the tree will have more leaves. When someone leaves, leaf falls off the tree from the branch representing that floor. The fullness and capacity is demonstrated by how "full" the leaves are on the tree. This tree would be projected onto the front of Hunt Library. 

PROCESS

IDEATION

Our team first wanted to think of different ways to solve this problem of where the heck to meet. Originally, we planned on meeting at Starbucks, but the coffee shop was really full. If only there was a way to find out earlier, we thought. Then we realized--we could build a tool that can tell help students figure out the best place to study by detecting how close to full capacity a certain space is. 

TECH 

Then, we played with different ways to pipeline between the particle and the code itself. 

VISUALIZATION

Our team played with many different ideas before we settled on our final output. Originally, we thought about retrofitting the lights in hunt, as well as different patterns and colors to display. Then we settled on an intuitive metaphor.