Infostudio: teaching ambient display design using home automation

The infostudio course unit introduced 3rd year undergraduate students to the design of ambient display as physical, human-scale installations that convey data-driven spatial experiences. Students developed ambient display installations in a common printer hub room that subtly reflected the electronic network traffic, human activities and environmental data within the adjacent computer labs in real time. The resulting prototypes explored how the combination of common networked home automation hardware controlling simple electrical devices and multiple multimedia projections can be used to convey real-time information through different human senses.