SIParCS 2020 - Mara Ulloa

Developing a Real-Time Weather Museum Touchscreen

Recorded Talk

Due to the technical nature of scientific research and the tools produced from such discoveries, it can be challenging to communicate essential breakthroughs with the general public. Effectively disseminating scientific findings amplifies the benefits of the work performed by the scientific community. Considering this, our goal of developing a new touchscreen interface that displays real-time weather data aims to deliver a userfriendly and educational kiosk application. This display will allow users access to current weather conditions at locations throughout the United States, provide supportive information about its use of existing weather data, and will offer weather-map features such as temperature, precipitation, and wind visualization patterns for users to view. To accomplish this goal, under the guidance of staff from the UCAR Center for Science Education, Unidata, and Computational Information Systems Laboratory, requirements for the application were gathered via virtual user interviews. The mockup created for the development of this application was derived directly from the interviews conducted. Including the user interviews, the app was also adapted around an existing tool, the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV), produced by the Unidata team at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The IDV, which is currently used by university education environments, allows access to many real-time and archived datasets and for 3D-geoscience visualization and analysis. This new real-time weather museum touchscreen display will undergo further usability testing to eventually join other weather and climate exhibits at NCAR’s Mesa Lab in Boulder, CO, and at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center Visitor Center in Cheyenne, WY.

Mentors: Sharon Clark, Becca Hatheway, Jeff Weber, Eliott Foust, Summer Wasson, Yuan Ho

Slides