Nobody Panic! Just Be Like Them: Status Board

After tying up some loose ends on the Bio Heat Map gadget, it was time for Ed and I to move on to newer pasture (figuratively speaking of course). Joining forces with Watt Depot’s Gauge Gadget team, Jarret and Paul, we must now face a challenge of larger proportions, literally: A status billboard.

Tech news apparently has been buzzing last month over this conceptual status board Panic’s had theorized and teased about on their website (check out their Status Board Entry here for more information). And so seeing this as an interesting prospect for the Energy Competition we were asked to see what we could do about making a placeholder (mock) system that could easily be converted from displaying generic display data to being eventually being a full display status board.

For anyone still not certain, or perhaps not interesting in reading about it from Panic, a Status board is very similar to several already existing concepts in the world. From the status monitors at the airport, to the monitors for stock exchange, to tickers on the bottom of the news and kiosks at the local mall, the general concept is that a screen will display critical information designed to be readable for a passerby.


(An Example of an Initial Mockup for this Status board, as last maintained by Anthony Xu)

Right now we are only in the designing stage and since Jarret and Paul were given the assignment first we went to them for some feedback. It was decided that we’d use Firefox, in combination with the Full Fullscreen add-on to make a kiosk type display for your data that can be created using our current knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Now unlike the status board we were shown as inspiration for our task, we had to add something else to the mix. We needed to make the scenes transition from different modules as to provide more information for this competition. It includes updates on top rankings for a competition, up to date energy information, an rss ticker, and helpful tips. Looking up information about possibly adding this I actually came across another idea I’d like, if it had an alert system. After seeing this person (also inspired by the same status board) I got to thinking it might be cool if we could add a notifer that would announce when the rankings switched. Not a bad idea, but I’m not certain if we can get there with these mock-ups.

Working with 4 people who aren’t totally in sync may prove to be the greatest challenge but I believe we’ll be able to get through it. Look forward to some results within the next couple days.

You can see our project page with some mockup images by Jarret and Paul Here.