inAir: measuring and visualizing indoor air quality

ABSTRACT

Good indoor air quality is a vital part of human health. Poor indoor air quality can contribute to the development of chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma, heart disease, and lung cancer. Complicating matters, poor air quality is extremely difficult for humans to detect through sight and smell alone and existing sensing equipment is designed to be used by and provide data for scientists rather than everyday citizens. We propose inAir, a tool for measuring, visualizing, and learning about indoor air quality. inAir provides historical and real-time visualizations of indoor air quality by measuring tiny hazardous airborne particles as small as 0.5 microns in size. Through user studies we demonstrate how inAir promotes greater awareness and motivates individual actions to improve indoor air quality.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.m MISCELLANEOUS

General Terms:
Design, Measurement

Keywords:
air quality, domestic computing, health, sustainability