An I School student project is headed to this year's Maker Faire, a unique showcase of creativity and craftsmanship. "Kill-a-Liter", which originated in the Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) course, is a tool to expose households' water consumption and encourage conservation.
The system was developed in the fall 2009 TUI course by first-year MIMS student Niranjan Krishnamurthi, second-year MIMS student Mohit Gupta, and Hazel Onsrud, a 2009 MIMS alumna and currently a graduate student in UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group. When the three were looking at user interfaces for energy conservation, most examples dealt with electricity rather than water. "We wanted something tangible, something you could actually use and feel," said Krishnamurthi, "not just some visual screensaver."
The current prototype is a fixture attachable to any faucet, similar to a water filter. The system detects a household’s water usage and, based on preset thresholds, begins to slowly restrict the water flow as usage increases. The user is allowed to obtain full water flow again with a simple pumping action. Green and red LED lights on the faucet reveal how your household's water consumption compares to your neighbors'.
"Water is interesting, because it's different than electricity," Onsrud explained. "We could make people work for or generate electricity; you can't do that for water. The infrastructure in the U.S. is set up in a way that makes it a challenge to try to conserve water in the system, as is." Although it takes a lot of time and effort to obtain this scarce resource, water is treated by the majority of North Americans as something that is readily available when they need it, in whatever quantity they may desire, according to the project team. Kill-a-Liter aims to bridge this gap by exposing more information about water usage and encouraging households to conserve.
Maker Faire
Maker Faire is a unique "do-it-yourself" showcase of creativity and ingenuity, a newfangled fair that combines high-tech wizardry and low-tech craftsmanship, in a two-day, family-friendly event May 22 & 23, 2010, at the San Mateo County Event Center.
The Faire features an eclectic mix of wild and wondrous creations, ranging from rockets and robots to weaving and screenprinting, and blending art and science with engineering and craft.
Tangible User Interfaces Course
Kill-a-Liter originated as a class project in the Fall 2009 Tangible User Interfaces course at the School of Information. In the course, professor Kimiko Ryokai focuses on the physical interaction with computational media, and students design and develop experimental applications, underlying technologies, and theories using concept sketches, posters, physical mock-ups, working prototypes, and a final project report.
The course will be offered again in Spring 2011.
