A.N.I.M.U.S. - Ambient Intelligence system
for academic spaces

Improve the experience of academic spaces for users through Ambient Intelligence technologies

Time

Client

Project Type

Role

July 2021

Politecnico di Milano

Interaction Design

UX Designer

Tools

Figma,  Protopie,  Arduino

Problem outline

With the post-pandemic gradual comeback to in-presence life at university, smarter and more sustainable management of classrooms’ facilities and time schedules of spaces is needed to improve the quality of the academic experience of students and professors and provide inclusive access to universities' facilities.
In addition, global sustainability guidelines urge to reshape the way large complexes of buildings and infrastructures of all kinds manage the consumption of energy.

The solution

ANIMUS is an automated system for the smart management of academic spaces featuring Ambient Intelligence technologies.

The system is able to manage and control the occupancy of classrooms and direct the flux of students during the day on the basis of their specific needs of light condition and silence and the room’s light infrastructure (mapping the space in areas instead of rows) providing presets for different activities and smart switches able to proactively switch off lights when not needed.

Together with the mobile interaction, the system provides a physical on-site interface that provides insights to users and also lets them interact with it. For all these devices the team implemented a specific experience that would keep into account the needs of all kinds of users.

1. Mobile beacon notification

This notification gets to the user as soon as he is in the near hood of the Campus, suggesting the interaction with ANIMUS or showing the classroom of his next lecture.

2. External Tablet

Right outside every classroom, a 10-inch display is placed to show detailed information like the actual status of the class, the most recommended activity to perform inside, the next event on the schedule, and the facilities provided in the room.

3. Mobile Interaction

Accessing the redesigned mobile application of Politecnico di Milano when already inside the Campus, users can look for a room for their activities in less than 3 taps. They only have to select the Campus, the activity they want to perform, and the time slot.

4. Internal Tablet

Inside every classroom, ANIMUS exploits the actual Cisco tablets used for distance learning allowing professors to control each light point with presets for different kinds of lessons or single lamps.

The process

Discover

After a primary desk research of Ambient Intelligence applications that showed a massive lack of UX and ease of use, the team opted for a user-focused approach in field research. This was meant to gather qualitative and quantitative data through surveys (that allowed to map morphology of activities and spaces) and semi-structured focus groups with students on the Campus.

The main insights inferred were the identification of the main activities performed and the poor quality of silence and lighting and the low customization of spaces. 

Define the variables

Considering the three main activities of autonomous study, group work, and prototyping, we made up our minds to isolate a low number of variables:
‍
- number of people
- noise level
- light intensity

Those three variables, if crossed with already present information such as spaces' event schedule and the list of facilities provided in each space, allow for controlling occupancy level and lighting infrastructure, which affects directly the main areas highlighted by the brief.

Development

The working brain of our system is based on a complex system of sensors that provide all the information and data needed to build the most valuable experience and make it tailored to each user. For each aspect of the system, we provided the most suitable sensor that could bring the highest performance in terms of data without breaking any privacy of users.

Room occupancy

Active lighting

Prototype and Testing

Considering the high permeance of technology in this project, the team had to face constraints related to feasibility in terms of financial sustainability, scalability, and privacy conservation of users. For this reason, the prototyping activity has been kept parallel to other activities throughout the design process.

Testing has played an important role in the process as we needed to constantly get back to users to test soundness and students' perceptions about the concept.
In order to test the feasibility and user-friendliness of the system the team had to set up a phygital set of single prototypes that managed to link between themselves with Arduino boards and Protopie applications.

Conclusion

This project represented a first chance to design a hybrid experience for a group of users much larger and much more diversified than a usual project. Dealing with the physical and digital components of interaction, and calibrating technologies in order to fulfill needs in the best way possible without compromising users' privacy has been the biggest challenge and a huge opportunity to try myself.

Plus, considering the fact that I am part of that group of users has been an additional small challenge that pushed me and my teammates to deliver a good concept that could help our community at Polimi.