Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Give the gift of water

-I work at Teague, a design consultancy based in Seattle, and water is a daily subject.. i mean, it rains a lot :) , but for once we are trying to be a little bit more deep about water, or especially water usage ..


The Interaction design team started to install an homemade water level on the kitchen tap wired to an ipad , basically a pretty fancy way to check out our water consumption, a month later here is the result, I'm proud of this initiative and gave for the cause , if you have a little bit of time to check out the project and a tiny bit of money to give then we'll definitely thank you, but i'm sure you'll find yourself thanking yourself for doing something actually useful online ;) .Anyway take a minute to go through that project , it's actually interesting .


"There is a water problem on planet Earth. We are running out of clean water to use because we are using up our limited fresh water supply at an untenable rate.

You would not assume this when using the average kitchen faucet: water appears to flow infinitely. We lift the handle, interact with a 13 inch stream of water for a few seconds, and then it’s gone–down the drain like magic.

For most of us, the ease with which we access and use water in our daily lives sits in stark contrast with what we increasingly know to be true: the stuff is scarce. The very unit of measure by which we are billed for its usage, CCF (748 gallon increments), is so generous it makes this vital substance appear cheaply abundant not to mention infinite. Furthermore, while CCF measurements allow us to calculate average usage, utility bills don’t isolate specific activities like washing dishes or brushing teeth, so there is no way to pinpoint where water is being overused–and where it could be conserved.

Recognizing this fact, the interaction design team at Teague decided to make a device that allowed us to take a measurement at points of use. Working with our in-house physical prototyper, the team built a Wi-Fi connected water meter and attached it to the faucet in our studio kitchen...."


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