Early in the development of a side project that would eventually turn into mimirOpen was an idea to create data visualizations that help bridge the understanding between environmental data and the user. The data was collected from a rudimentary IoT device that was placed in a room to monitor the environment. Collecting temperature, humidity and light levels, the device built a dataset that could be used to understand the environment over time.
The visualizations were created using p5.js to create a heatmap of the data
over time. This was done using the sensor data to encode indoor temperature
levels though colour and date-time to x and y position in the grid. Later, I
added the stoke outlines and iconography to connect indoor and outdoor
environments to see what correlations could be made.
The final visualization was a digital mockup of a realtime application that showed the current and daily trend in a line chart at the bottom that slowly built up the heatmap above. This was a way to show the user how the environment was changing over time and how the plant was responding to the environment.