Public Lab was founded in the wake of the 2010 BP oil disaster, during an information blackout for residents and the rest of the world. In response a group of concerned locals, environmental advocates, designers, and social scientists lofted “community satellites” (made from balloons, kites and digital cameras) over the spill to collect real-time data about its impact. Through an open source platform, contributors stitched over 100,000 aerial images into maps of the coastline before, during, and after the oil spread. These high-resolution maps were featured by BBC and New York Times, among others, allowing residents to speak their truth about what was going on in the Gulf Coast. The success of the grassroots mapping effort galvanized the group to found Public Lab as a new research and social space for the development of low-cost tools and practical methods for community-based environmental monitoring and assessment. (Source www.publiclab.org)
Design a new full-screen user interface for Infragram.org The Infragram project brings together a range of different efforts to make Do-It-Yourself plant health comparisons possible with infrared photography. Infragram.org enables people with Infragram-modified cameras to upload photos for analysis and conversion using techniques like NDVI (used in satellite imaging analysis). It also allows for live streaming from a modified webcam. This project will overhaul the UI of Infragram to be full-screen and create space for new features like multiple resolutions of video, dragging in a recorded video instead of a still image for conversion, and pop up panels with Q&A, tips, tutorials, and more, so that they can feature more helpful guidance text.
