Local environment

On Local Environment project

Maybe everybody remembers how Pekka from the Ministry of Environment presented our Local Environment project? To put it short, it is an application for different media and for everybody to rate their environmental surroundings where ever they are. This means that the users have to allow the media to recognise their current location which they only evaluate visually, not numerically. Furthermore there are no rules on how to measure a good or bad environment – all is based on how the users feel (mutu in Finnish). After their evaluation a point will appear on a world map. So for instance if the local environment is extremely good – whatever that may mean – the point will be bright green, and if really bad, it will be dark black. We have been talking with Pekka about the colors, whether they are green and red which would be the worst combination for color blinds. Also there are other issues in using two colors. The idea of a wireframe blanket that covers the whole world means that there is a gradiant of colors between two given points which would create quite unexpected colors to areas that have not been evaluated. Unless of course the other color is black.

Three main issues in our local environment project: 

1. An attractive user interface that everybody wants load.

2. An evaluation app of the state of the environment at the current location.  

3. A world map – preferably in 3D, works in a small screen and is attractive – that shows the evaluation data by both the experts and the users.

So far our project has following problems:

1. Until there is no evaluation, which are the colors of land and sea? Maybe no colors, just white with black contours? Would the map only show the data from experts first? How would the users’ evaluation of the environment differ from the experts’? Different color combination maybe? Or users: green-black, experts the same but with more desaturated colors?

My idea is that when starting to get data from users the contrast would grow and slowly cover experts’ data. After which the user could compare datas? How?

2. Another thing Pekka has raised is comparing data with neighbouring countries as in global environment project. I have problems in understanding how all these different aspects can be combined?

So please, if any of you have some ideas, comment.

Now we have decided not to meet with Pekka (from the Ministery) every week, but to meet when we have something more finished visuals to show him, so it would be easier to talk. So this is our aim in the near future. Also what Markku said made me think: How to make the application so attractive that somebody would really want to use it. This is my main focus now.