In these times of great turmoil caused by Covid-19, we, as a society, ought to wear masks to protect ourselves from getting infected and infecting anyone with Covid-19. Obviously, one of the main irritations and objections raised by people is masks' disabling people's ability to breathe properly. While thinking about mask blocks one's ability to breathe, we realized that there are some places on earth that people are losing their ability to breathe properly even without mask under the dome of a polluted sky. This urged us to think how to awaken people about that since air pollution is a reality we were facing even without Covid-19, but how much impact it has caused in terms of making people more aware and cautious about the cleanness of the air we breathe than wearing masks which is a reality we are encountering for several months. Therefore, we decided to engage people by the same argument: making it a human-centered issue via maintaining that our carbon footprint, primarily, air pollutants are damaging our health. Therefore, we decided to show people that air pollution is not just killing our environment, but it also has the potential to annihilate our entire specie- which is also a part of the environment. We decided upon targeting two aspects of human nature that would create the most awareness and increment in cautiousness: action-reward cycle and health concerns. For health concerns, we used a Windows Forms App, by using C#, to create a counter, icons and a track-bar whose range is coded by using Air Quality Index scale. By checking the Air Quality Data, people could view the danger the air pollution could possess towards their own health by scrolling the track-bar from 0-500, and in accordance with the Air Quality Index the icons used for lung-health are changing indicating the magnitude of danger. At first, we were going to use scientific 2D models and 3D Lung Models to show the negative effect of pollution, but since we are coding the demo, and these models would decrease our solution's effectiveness in technical terms, for now we decided to stick with basic icons, to create an infographic effect; however, in future we could use more advanced scientific visualizations instead of icons. Furthermore, we were going to use Google Maps API to get traffic congestion data; however, its fee was a bit high, so we web scraped traffic data and used it to show the areas of high use of automobiles powered by fossil fuels, and give drivers and users of app feedback regarding their use of automobiles, and how they might have used alternative and cleaner transportation ways. Besides, we also provide feedback to startups and companies who are working on modernizing urban transportation cleaner and faster to improve and expand their products' reach. Furthermore, we developed a reward cycle by making log entry system via Arduino, by using RFID cards, to people gain rewards and points to their cards by using alternative ways of transportation. They would be able to utilize these points in restaurants that are encouraging carbon-freeness and minimum the meat consumption.

We used the data we gathered from the sources (JAXA and other websites) to create the Air Quality Index, from 0-500, as a measure to show people how their own health is affected by the air pollution via putting a trackbar. Viewers will first learn the air quality in the are they live and later can see air pollution's result on their lungs with a slider. First, we were going to use 3D lung models or 2D scientific lung models to show the effect of greenhouse gases that are released due to factories and fossil fuels; however, we decided that in order to fully convey our idea behind we wanted to first prototype, by pictograms that are taken from png image sites such as Flaticon and Pngtree.com, and ,then, start our real process of using advanced graphical models. These representations we will show to the viewers will force them to have a realization with their situation and encourage them to take an action to change it. Seeing your lung damaged will cause a reaction from the viewer.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aFyPfeBKsLbdWpisHcUJA7CiT3yRfD3G/view?usp=sharing

JAXA's GHGs Trend Viewer

Flaticon

Pngtree

Windows Forms App