System Design

reViz3D combines real-time code updates, local and remote assets and data streams to create real-time 3D data visualizations. These visualizations can be exported as React.js components. Created in late 2017, this tool enables researchers/developers/data scientists to quickly create, combine or share hardware prototype's visualizations. reViz3D main focus is on data that is better visualized at a spatial context. This software has been developed and supported by MIT Media Lab Researchers, under MIT Open Source License.

Motivation

When an artist finishes painting a canvas, often they look to it not only to admire their creation but to understand how one can learn from each brush stroke, how the mixture of ink can reveal better tones, and improve the artist creation methods and skills for the next piece. Prototyping and understanding the outcome data of a prototype development is a process that as been done for centuries, Michelangelo used physical prototypes∫ to communicate construction details [1] Henry Ford explored at least nineteen models (some of which were prototypes) before finalizing the revolutionary model T design [2].

The current technological scenario made rapid hardware prototyping more accessible than ever before [3], this also reflects in the developer's communities, with movements like the maker movement, which is an umbrella term encompassing the convergence of designer, artisan and hacker cultures [4]. But what if designers, researchers, and engineers (i.e., makers) could develop customized visualizations to understand the behavior of their prototypes at the same rate they create it. Moreover, if those visualizations can be easily shared within the developers team and modular enough to be reused and incremented over time, thus changing how hardware design decisions are made.

Tarsila do Amaral - exposition at MoMA | 2018