The water fountain that's as interesting as your smartphone.
We noticed people were involved in their smartphones more than their surroundings or even other people. We wanted to change that.
We created a multiplayer quiz game and a fountain that reacts to users' answers, where the winner was given control of a specially designed fountain for a time. It was a huge hit!
SMRT WATR (smart water) is an interactive fountain and mobile game IoT experience I developed along with Josh Bradshaw, Isaac Hunter, Shubh Jagani, Matt Jones, and Emma Cooper.
We were challenged to design something to do with water using the Internet of Things. We were inspired by different public fountains and noticed that many were rarely appreciated as more than just decoration, or worse, an obstruction. People were more involved in their smartphones than in interacting with fountains or with other people. We wanted to change that.
I was the lead UX designer and front-end developer for this project, and focused on the user's interaction with their mobile device, and the effect on the fountain. As an IoT product, actions performed on the mobile device would affect the fountain in the real world.
We entertained a number of different ways users might interact with the fountain, including make-it-rain, inspired by throwing real coins into a fountain. In this proposal, users could donate to "throw" virtual currency into the fountain and see real time reactions from the fountain. A second concept was a crowed-sourced performance, where users could select an action which would be placed in a performance queue.
After considering expected engagement and social potential we decided to build a quiz game that allowed users to interact with both other players as well as the fountain. The fountain would react to each question, responding appropriately as each user answered a question.
If a user answered correctly, the fountain would light up in their player colour and increase the jet in their corner. If they answered incorrectly, the jet in their corner would drop until the next question.
I worked on streamlining the user flow for all users, considering what would happen if there were not enough users or too many users. We were able to flesh out a task flow for the entire user engagement loop.
I mocked up screens for the quiz game, and tested them on my group mates and other classmates. Using their feedback, I improved and refined my designs.
We set up a Tornado server on a Raspberry Pi to serve the web UI, and to communicate with the fountain's controller. Tornado supports WebSocket and html templates to dynamically change the UI for separate clients on the fly. I wrote all of the app's front-end styling and logic, as well as the gameplay related server-side logic.
Check out the front-end, back-end, and controller code on GitHub.
I also helped design and build the fountain basin itself, and worked on a mechanical solution to attach the fountain jets to servos.
We showed off our fountain and game at the end of the term. It was a huge hit, and we won the People's Choice award.


text:
/ News / HNTB Names Eric Nelson Principal Planner in Virginia Beach
HNTB Names Eric Nelson Principal Planner in Virginia Beach
Parul Dubey on January 24, 2019 - in News, People
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., – Eric Nelson has joined HNTB as principal planner in the firm's Virginia Beach office. Nelson, who has spent much of his career in the Hampton Roads region, brings nearly 25 years of transit, rail, and strategic and environmental planning experience to the position. His leadership and skills will help clients implement transformative mobility solutions across the mid-Atlantic.
At HNTB, Nelson will work with clients across the region to plan and implement transformative multimodal solutions.
"Eric has a track record of performance and a reputation for excellence with our clients across the region," said Nick Antonucci, PE, Mid-Atlantic District leader and vice president for HNTB. "He is a tremendous asset for our team who will help deliver transportation solutions to our clients that improve mobility and drive long-term economic vitality."
Before joining HNTB, Nelson worked for other consulting firms serving regional transit authorities, such as Hampton Roads Transit, municipal transportation departments and other public agencies in the Hampton Roads region and across Virginia and the region.
Nelson earned a Master of City and Regional Planning from Rutgers University, and a Bachelor of Science in public administration/urban and regional studies from James Madison University.
HNTB has served Virginia for more than 55 years, helping shape key transportation infrastructure, including bridges, tunnels, toll roads, airports, transit systems and roadways. HNTB clients in Hampton Roads include the Virginia Department of Transportation and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel District. HNTB supports some of the region's highest profile projects, such as the Downtown/Midtown Tunnel between Norfolk and Portsmouth, the conversion of HOV lanes to HOT lanes on I-64 in Norfolk, the I-64/I-264 interchange in Virginia Beach, and the CBBT's Thimble Shoals parallel tunnel. HNTB also provides construction management services across the region.
HNTB Corporation is an employee-owned infrastructure solutions firm serving public and private owners and construction contractors. Celebrating 105 years of service in the United States and more than 55 years in Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region, HNTB continues to grow in size and service offerings to clients from four offices throughout the mid-Atlantic, currently employing approximately 200 full-time professionals in Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Maryland. HNTB understands the life cycle of infrastructure and addresses clients' most complex technical, financial and operational challenges. Professionals nationwide deliver a full range of infrastructure-related services, including award-winning planning, design, program management and construction management. For more information, visit www.hntb.com.
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text:
Buzzy Barbican builds on its Hackney links
08/09/2013 02/14/2016 Loving Dalston ARCHITECTURE, CULTURE, Hackney, LATEST, NEWS
THE BARBICAN, the cultural corner of that altar to capitalism, the City of London, has always had a subversive tendency to the weird along with its presentation of concerts of music by long-dead Germans.
The mirror house in Dalston, the latest attempt by the Barbi to build its image with its neighbour, Hackney, was a hit last month July 2013. Now it is presenting Hack the Barbican, which it terms "a collaboration between artists, technologists and entrepreneurs".
Hackney arty outfit the Trampery, which runs sites at Shoreditch, London Fields and London Fields, is helping the Barbican to do crazy stuff in the foyers of the Silk Street EC2Y 8DS arts complex.
In the words of its press office, "Foyers will become home to 100 discipline-bending installations, performances, workshops and discussions, a new collaboration between artists, technologists and entrepreneurs…
"Hack the Barbican will see site-specific projects hijack areas of the Barbican's interior and turn them into games, performances and installations run by theatre performers, computer scientists, sculptors, hardware hackers, teachers, musicians and everything in between." [Tut-tut, it was reading well until "and everything in between". At least the press release didn't also say "anything can happen. And probably will!" — Ed]
Getting in the picture: Dalston (mirror) House was a draw, especially with school-holiday parents
The blurb goes on [of course it does]: "The programme will feature coding, soldering, painting and fabrication in specially created hack-spaces in the Barbican foyers while even the Barbican's publicity screens and audio announcement system may be prone to unusual behaviour.
"Marking a radical departure from conventional arts events Hack the Barbican has been organised without any central curation or commissioning. Taking inspiration from hacker culture the project has been developed over a period of six months through weekly sessions open to everyone."
You may question just how "radical" a Barbican "departure" could ever be, but undeniably this sounds like fun. And all the projects are, it is claimed, "resourced by their creators acting entrepreneurially".
The programme includes Penthouse 4C (picture above), a half-size replica of the Barbican Estate's biggest flat — sorry, apartment — built in the central foyer; Unmoored, a weather station on the roof beaming data to screens throughout the centre to transform the Barbican into an airship in motion; and the lower level cloakroom becoming the Ministry of Measurement whose bureaucratic functionaries… [Stop right there, that one sounds, uhm, like office stuff.]
Snoozer: realistic touch in the apartment mock-up
Charles Armstrong, of the Trampery said: "This is the starting point for Hack the Barbican. Not only is it London's largest-ever collaboration between artists and technologists, it also tears up the rule book about how a major arts event is organised and resourced.
"Hack the Barbican is a taste of what can happen when we unleash the entrepreneurial energy of a new generation of artists and innovators." [Entrepreneurial, there's that word again.]
* Hack the Barbican, Barbican, Silk Street EC2Y 8DS, ends 31 August 2013.
* The picture at top shows one of the installations. Hang on, isn't that someone asleep in a corner? See close-up, left
Corn fritters, or a way through the maize
City makes another move on Shoreditch


Around here lately we have boxes in the mail to look forward to. Myron has two sets of chess coming, one an antique and the other newer and otherwise interesting. There are so many books, too, more books than I can tell you about. Even today, three showed up amid the Christmas cards (musical) and the Serious Mail with Account Numbers. One of them is a book of writing exercises. You would think I'd be sick of writing lately, and I am not. I'm in a groove again the likes of which I haven't experienced since late September. Words swish through me and out through my fingers lately with all the force of a waterfall, and not one of those trickly ones, either.
The first round of veterinary testing was inconclusive, so the baby has a procedure scheduled for later on this month, just before Christmas. It's hard to know how to move forward with him unless we're 100% sure of what we're dealing with. I look at him with his beautiful eyes, one with a marked iris and the other one clear, and I wish he could say anything to me to let me know how he felt or what I should do for him. He knows he doesn't feel well, but in his eyes, all I can see is his loving ohkimmy look as he tucks himself into a cinnamon roll and takes yet another nap. By now, we're used to his new noises and scratchier voice, and his straitened appetite. It should be the new normal, but it is not normal; it will never be normal.
Yesterday I took the camera out into the biting cold and stood on the picnic table at the park to try to catch a particular angle of the rear of our house. A skim of clouds muted the sun, which was huge and low in the sky. Such potential for yellow light, and yet it could do nothing to brighten the day, which stayed resolutely dim. I wasn't happy with anything I got. In just a few weeks the days will start getting longer again, and I'll be able to think ahead to the days when I can barely stand to sleep with a sheet, let alone a comforter. And socks, and flannel pajama pants and extra blankets and the skin-sapping furnace.
Right now, though, the chill is sinking in. My knuckles are still dry and scaly from those moments out in the park, standing on the picnic table like I owned it. I went with the fingerless gloves so that I could access all the tiny buttons on the camera, flick the wheel that slows the shutter speed. In two layers of pants, three tops, a massive winter parka complete with a fur-trimmed hood, I could barely stand to stay outside for ten minutes, and I was back inside before fifteen had passed. Everything hurts with this kind of cold, but as soon as you're inside, it melts off of you like ice held under a stream of hot tap water. You look around your walls with new gratitude every time. Winter will get old before I stop feeling this pleasure in being home again, this warmth in my muscles as solid as anything else I can touch if I just reach out. I'm present in all of it.
It's -15C/4F right now—it won't get much warmer—and you'd think this would ruin everything. But I'm about to slap on all those layers again and get to the post office, and then make a run for flour and walnuts and chocolate and coconut. The skies have that marvelous blue back in them today, and my Christmas spirit, such as it is, wants to bake goodies for a few people who deserve them. Experience dictates that if you give away the fruits of baking labors, the unbaked calories clinging to the bowl don't count. And I take that kind of win-win where I can get it.


Change out the Electrical Outlets and Switches – This. And this. Our outlets and switches were yellow and grimy and scary and HAD to go. Talk about a beautiful, wonderful, glorious improvement. Just be sure to shut the power off at the breaker first.
Upgrade Your Door Knobs – This was a super simple install. YouTube has some great demos on how to change them out quickly. And if I could do it, so can you.
Upgrade Your Doors – My husband works from home and his office is situated directly next to our son's playroom. Yikes. Not much we can do about sound passing through the walls, but replacing the thin, hollow doors definitely helped block some of it. Additionally, we took advantage of our laundry room window by replacing a regular door with one that has windows which brightened up an otherwise dark hallway. The difference is astounding.
Replace Kitchen and Bathroom Cabinet Hardware – No brainer, all you need is a screwdriver really…but a drill is really your best friend for a quick fix.
Change Out Light Bulbs – Might sound silly, but lighting is the best way to showcase what you've got and can really make or break the ambiance and functionality of a room. In areas such as the kitchen where you want your latest dish to really pop, or your walk-in closet where you should be able to see everything and make a quick wardrobe decision for the day, it can make a huge difference. And for an added bonus of long-term energy cost savings, splurge for the LEDs.
Install New Bathroom and Kitchen Faucets – For form and function, this is a great investment. Just think about how many times your faucets get used each and every day! The effort for us was sooo worth it!
Replace Outdated Light Fixtures – Am I the only one who is not a fan of ceiling fans? The ironic thing is that my one year old is IN LOVE with them. Basically every time we are in a hardware store we have to take him down the fan aisle. And this house had a ceiling fan in every. single. room. Replacing these with more streamlined, contemporary style fixtures made all the difference.
Paint Walls – I'm all for expressing yourself, but giant red walls weren't exactly the statement I was going for this time around. We quickly covered them with Kelly Moore, San Fransisco Fog (KM5822) for an updated look.
Replace Old Window and Door Screens – There's nothing more annoying than to have a beautiful view of the great outdoors be blocked by an eyesore of a screen patch – or worse – a hole. Before heading to the store, measure inside the frame, taking left, right and middle measurements of the length, and top, bottom, and middle measurements of the width. The final measurement you should keep are the largest width and length that you measured.
Replace Old Vanity Mirrors – I am loving this and this right now, but the possibilities are endless!
I hope this quick list has been a help. Have you tackled any of these projects yourself? How did it go? I would love to hear more quick fix ideas, so please feel free to share below!