Democratizing Data Through Art: A Web-Based, User-Centric Approach to Water Quality Analysis and Visualization

Through collaboration with scientists and artists, MIT Sea Grant has developed a web-based, user-centric system for water quality analysis and visualization. We support the democratization of water quality data for research, aquaculture, and environmental justice, and are working with stakeholders to ensure value-based design and long-term impact.

This system (named "Seaglass") provides for immediate dissemination of engaging, interactive, and mobile-friendly data visualizations (2D, 3D, geospatial) to the public, addressing the increased need of data diversification and outreach effort by research communities. Seaglass was initially designed in collaboration with one organization, with the goal of significantly improving the organization's workflow for analysis and scientific dissemination, as well as the availability and impact of their data to the public. But because of its simple aesthetic and modular nature, which facilitates integration of new features that are easy to use and access by various audiences, the system has attracted interest by other organizations among the artistic and scientific communities.

Users can upload their own data into the system database via a simple, yet powerful procedure, and can utilize and download data from this database or any of the internally-linked data services. All data uploaded into the system database can be made available via the system's own data service, for use by external analysis and visualization systems. This system makes extensive use of data and web map services for efficient delivery of raw data and prepared data layers. This way, data generators can focus on storage, and make their data available via a robust and secure data service for web developers and UX designers to use in building interfaces. This approach means that data can reside in an optimized database, and users can extract just the data they want.

The system web interface fully supports mobile use as well as graphical export, to ensure that the most recent data is easily presentable at all times, increasing overall visibility of the data. Modern, open-source web frameworks utilized by the system provide a vast set of visualization tools to everyone, and the overall aesthetic and layout of the system promotes greater usability in its appeal ~ users enjoy being in the system environment.