”Air for Asuncion” was selected for the Mozilla Technology Fund in 2024 to help inhabitants of Asuncion measure and track air quality. The National University of Engineering needed to give their sensor system an interface that would display air quality data and available resources.
The challenge
How can we let people have access to this information?
The University has sensors that retrieve data from air in the capital city of Asuncion. This information is something professors want to make public as a health-awareness tool that anyone should be able to access.
But they also want people to understand a little bit more about air quality if possible. How can we help them achieve that?
Digesting academic content People don't like to read that much. And academic information is not the easiest to digest. How can we communicate data & information effectively?
Data visualization There are many ways to read predictive data, we do so every day with apps like when we check the weather. How do we do that for air quality?
Resources & call to actions Knowing that air might be bad is good. But knowing what to do to avoid health complications is better. Can we guide users on what to do?
Before research
After research
Process
Initial ideas and assumptions were throughouly discussed and observed through the lens of the team as well as the university. We decided to dive deep into their academic content and official materials to later vote on outcomes that would later be re-analyzed with Heuristics, User testing and various iterations. This open iterative process with dynamic activities allowed a clean output
Interviews with stakeholders We had an interview with the parties involved in the project to understand the area of focus, the limitations, the resources and the needs for the project
Workshops with stakeholders Workshops helped us funnel information, clear out goals and exercise the assumptions to understand and give shape to the future platform.
Initial Prototyping & Iterations We started prototyping since the beginning, quickly iterating prototypes via guerrilla testing by analyzing the proposed wireframes
User Testing and refinement The testing allowed us to gain insights on changes we needed to do on the prototype to improve the accuracy of our outcomes
Documentation After preparing the high fidelity prototype with the last changes I developed documentation on micro-interactions for the map and general use.
Workshops
User testing
Documentation
Testing script
Iteration
Conversations with engineers
Workshops
User testing
Documentation
Testing script
Iteration
Conversations with engineers
Workshops
User testing
Documentation
Testing script
Iteration
Conversations with engineers
Workshops
User testing
Documentation
Testing script
Iteration
Conversations with engineers
Documentation
Conclusion
By diving deep into the context of the problem with the academics, engineers and users, we were able to quickly iterate a solution that integrated insights from all parties involved. Testing with potential users brought us a world of ideas for future iterations, add-ons and content sharing strategies. This project successfully achieved its goal to communicate information simply and openly thanks to great team work and coordination.
