A windmill web site
Advisor: Jeff Ondich
Meeting time: TTh 10:15-11:55 (Fall/Winter term)
Background
Carleton's wind turbine has been running since September, 2004. In addition to generating power, the turbine generates data. There are wind speed, wind direction, and power production, of course, but also more obscure pieces of information such as the temperature of the oil that lubricates the turbine. In all, the turbine's sensors collect about 40 separate pieces of data every few seconds.
RENew Northfield, a non-profit organization whose mission is "to lead the Northfield-area community to energy self-sufficiency," was one of the main participants in the planning and construction of Carleton's wind turbine. Recently, they contacted me with the idea of building a web site that would enable people to see the wind turbine in action. They want to create an interesting and easy-to-use interface to the turbine's data, both as a community service and as an advertising tool for their future projects.
The Project
Your goal for this project will be to collaborate with the various stakeholders (Carleton's Facilities office, ITS, RENew Northfield, and perhaps other members of the Carleton and Northfield communities) to design and implement a web interface to the data generated by Carleton's wind turbine. The early phases of this project will focus on figuring out what people want, brainstorming data visualization ideas, creating rough mock-ups of possible web page designs, determining the constraints on the project (technical, legal, etc.), and so on. You will develop formal requirements documents to describe what will be built, research and select appropriate software tools for implementing the requirements, and, eventually, implement the system. All of this will be done in close collaboration with representatives of ITS and RENew.
The results of this project, should they be approved by the necessary Carleton staff, will become an on-going part of Carleton's web site.
References
Carleton's weather web site at http://weather.carleton.edu/. Designed, implemented, and maintained by Doug Foxgrover, Nathanael Motz, Colin Nichols, Todd Springer, Per Hatlevik, Erin Quealy, and Mark Rose Lewis.
E. Tufte. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition. Graphics Press, 2001.
S. Krug. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd edition. New Riders Press, 2005.
K. Wiegers. Software Requirements, 2nd edition. Microsoft Press, 2003.
D. Norman. The Design of Everyday Things. Doubleday, 1990.
...and lots more.