Intention
Ground traffic is one of the most pressing issues for urban centers in the world today. High traffic volumes increaes pollution, decrease our economic efficiency, and more importantly, impact our happiness. For our fourth-year design project, Riley, Alex, Scott, and myself asked how we could improve the state of traffic control technology in the world today. Alex and Scott focused on developing an intelligent, distributed traffic control network, while Riley and I tried to reimagine how one might come to understand and interact with a traffic network.
Research
We started conversations with Academics, Traffic Engineers, and Transportation Consultations to try and understand what interfaces into traffic networks look like today. We learned that in general, traffic engineers are quite disconnected from the network they are responsible for. Interfacing with a traffic network usually means going to the physical intersection and looking at the computers in the box, and traffic data is almost always collected manually. Unfortunately, this information is crucial in helping Traffic Engineers make changes to signal timing switches, which control the efficiency of the network.
However, with Alex and Scott's Adaptive Traffic Control System, Traffic Engineers wouldn't need to focus on tweaking every single intersection's timing plan. Traffic Engineers could focus on important issues, such as understanding patterns in the traffic network, and planning future network improvments. Riley and I decided to focus on developing an application that supported Traffic Engineers in these new capacities.
Design
Riley and I began designing the web application which would act as the looking-glass into the network. I was responsible for scoping out the functionality and visual strategies for presenting the information, and Riley transformed those goals into a sleek and intuitive interface.
The application aims to serve the core workflows and needs of Traffic Engineers in the context of the Intelligant System. Users can easly determine important information about a network, such as which intersections are working and which are not. From there, it's easy to dive into deep performance and volume metrics which can help the user understand the localized traffic situation.
Intersection status layer with the connection status popup and an intersection preview popup being displayed.
Full-page dashboard for an intersection which displays it's state, flow volumes, turn volumes, and history.
A searchable intersections list.
Map-based visualizations present various performance metrics as s function of their location, which aim to help Traffic Engineers understand network-wide patterns which were previously impossible to detect. The use of glyphs to represent quantitative metrics provides a more intuitive understanding of these patterns.
Intersection flow represented as a glyph. The height of the line is proportional to the flow through the intersection.
A visual representation of traffic flow at intersections and along major arteries in a city, providing an intuirtive understanding of the traffic patterns within the network.
Developing Relay enabled us to critically examine the future of traffic control and the potential shift of roles within that space. As a team, we were able to present an exciting peek into what traffic control might look like in the future. Although the project will not be continuing, it has been a valuable experience to all of us in our ability to explore innovative solutions to challenging problems in the world around us.
