This is the visual prototype for VIA, visualizing indoor activity.
VIA is a web-based interface that tracks customer behavior in indoor facilities.
It monitors people in a privacy-aware and location-based visualization.
And because it's a web-based graphical user interface, it can be built on top of virtually
any data collecting system, like those capturing Bluetooth devices, or those measuring Wi-Fi
signals, or pressure sensors beneath the floor, or video capturing and recognition, etc.
As an example, we'll take a look at these shopping-centered customers.
It looks like some of them are using laptops, and some other are using their smartphones
and other mobile devices, some of which are actually sharing their Bluetooth connection,
which can be easily captured by strategically positioned Bluetooth antennas.
These antennas will then upload location-based data to the cloud, which, in turn, will bring
the data back to the interface.
VIA is useful in facilities like airports, hospitals, universities, shopping areas, and
any other indoor facilities with a basic human activity-capturing system, as described a
few moments ago.
VIA will perform tasks such as tracking customer density in movement inside a building, identifying
dwell time and average transit time between multiple zones, set up customized alarms and
alerts to specific subscribed users, spot critical issues, and optimize electronic
billboard revenue and ads metrics.
Last but not least, VIA is meant to be used not only by facility managers and system administrators,
but also by services operators, staff, and personnel, marketing departments, and external
advertisers.
The symbology used to represent human density is very simple.
Each zone, or data collecting point, is represented by an outer, wide circle, and they're all
the same size.
The human density is defined by the inner circle.
The darker and bigger the inner circle, the more dense is the zone.
The lighter and smaller the inner circle, the less dense is the zone.
User stream between multiple zones is represented by the relative amount of white lines between
the zones.
So the more lines, the more dense.
The less lines, the less dense.
Now let's take a look at the interface.
There are five important regions, the display filters that indicate which kind of filters
are being shown on the screen, the map, which is a basic plan of the building and its floors,
the right sidebar, which showcases targeted information and options based on the selected
zone, the three panels, which enable administrators to add zone settings, travel back in time,
and change the interface setup, and at last, the bottom status bar, responsible for showing
targeted data depending on the selected panel.
By placing the mouse on top of the critical zone, or single tap in touchscreen devices,
the interface will show that relative user streams focused on the selected zone.
And by actually clicking it, or double tap in touchscreen devices, the interface will
show a series of details for the current selected zone.
In this case, the floor stream dialog, it's noticeable that customers are coming mainly
from the minus one and ground floors, and going to the fourth and fifth floors.
The next dialog shows the density over the last 24 hours, and when applied, when was
the zone over its own capacity.
The following dialog describes the proportion between static customers, like those sitting
on a bar, and customers that are only passing by.
The last dialog brings out an hourly dwell time during the past 24 hours, and when a
second zone is selected, it will be possible to compare the dwell time for the two selected
zones.
Notice that the current density level for the first and second selected zones are respectively
92 and 22%.
Let's unselect the last zone and take a look at the sidebar where the visual editor panel
is selected.
Right now, we are able to edit the name for the selected zone, which is now set to an
open entry.
We can also edit or assign multiple zone categories depending on the desired content management.
In user subscriptions, registered employees can be assigned to the selected zone and will
receive its alerts and messages whenever available.
The last menu item, set alarm, enables administrators to set customized alarms to specific zones,
which in turn will trigger alerts that will be sent to the zone's subscribed users.
The alarms can be sent via the interface, email, or SMS.
The second panel is the timeline browser.
It enables administrators to go back in time and track what happened during the past week,
month, or even according to a specific time span.
The configuration panel has some tricky features.
The first item, maximum density, allows administrators to set up individual capacity levels for each
zone.
Timeline scale, the second item, is where administrators opt to see between average
values or maximum values when going back on the timeline panel.
They can export the current data to a text, CSV, or SQL file, change their user password,
and send a support ticket to the interface designer.
At last, and because VIA is a web-based interface based on HTML5 and standard SVG graphics,
all employees can easily access VIA through their own devices and login into their own
accounts with limited access as they set up by administrators.
To finish, I'd like to leave you with three questions.
What do you think about this product?
Would it change anything about it?
Does it has any potential in your market?
Any feedback will be extremely helpful to conduct the evaluation and critical analysis
for the master's thesis this visual prototype is based on.
Thank you so much for your time.
