2009, Ring Ring

Final Proposal:

 If you can't see the video below, please check if you're behind the Great FireWall of China.

Ring Ring is a data visualization proposal for a paper mill factory located in southen Sweden. It aims to bring an ambient visualization for the most vital property data fed by an online analyzer, which you can also dig in and find potential problems. It could be easily detected by peripheral vision, and behaves like a quite child when nothing is wrong.

You can read the pdf version of the report if you prefer.

More data in a data packed room:

Testing the quality of paper takes more than 24 hours in a lab. With a new optical analyzer, Fors Mill, a paper mill located in south Sweden, can take online measurements of fiber quality every 20 seconds. This has a fundamental influence on their work- flow, since now they can get instantaneous feedback and make adjustments accordingly. It allows not only better control over paper quality, but also energy consumption.

The aim of this project is to find a good way to visualize the data collected by this analyzer. In a broad sense however, it could be any data for control room environment.

Research:

We have conducted a field research in the Fors Mill. Talking to the operators and observing them operating the machines gave us a clearer impression about their work flow and environment.

Some facts I have learned:

• It’s a very complex work that cannot be fully automated yet. Like cooking, there are abundance of factors that could change the result. It takes about 3 years to train an operator.

• There are loads of information and controls that operators have to take care of.

• Due to the very complex corelations between settings and outcome, it's impossible to control the process just from the analyzed result, which means this data screen is not a replacement for existing control interfaces.

Apart from that, we also opened a blog to share collective inspiration and findings.

Challenge and Criteria:

According to the research and findings, I define the challenge and criteria for this project as follows:

• Abstract from data type

The data displayed have abstract meanings, unlike temperature or weather. So it's important that the visualization method works with different types of data( but one dimension only)

• Easy to detect with peripheral sense

For the nature of control room environment, this data display should work in the background without taking too much attention. It should give you warning when necessary, and provide you more detailed information such as history/trend on demand.

• Scalability

The solution should be able to display at least 3, preferably 5-7 parameters at the same time.

• Aesthetics

Well it's necessary everywhere.  

Ideation:

I had 3 different concepts at the beginning, but soon narrowed down to one. You can see the others in this blog post. The basic idea is to have the information graphics running in the background, so it doesn't distract the operators when everything's normal, but gives caution when necessary. It also provides detailed information on demand. Here are some idea sketches for the chosen concept.