The intent of this installation is to add a visual and interactive element to Singularity’s large event space which regularly hosts conferences of over 150 people from all over the world.

The 12 icons represent SU’s “Global Grand Challenges,” or areas that the company believes have opportunity for innovation in the near future (things like “the environment,” “water,” and “energy”). Using these themes, I designed a set of signs connected to IoT relay triggers and a custom web-interface, scans a set of news sources from around the world for user-created keywords relating to these 12 topics and will light up the signs for the topics that trigger the most headlines. The scan runs every few minutes on its own or when new keywords are added.

I worked closely with a developer to create the web interface which allows for anyone to turn the signs on and off manually or add new keywords to the topic areas quickly and easily. You can see some of the wireframes I created below demonstrating the ideal interaction and features.

This installation is currently on display at Singularity University’s event space in Mountain View, CA,