Visualisation of data from IoT systems : A case study of a prototyping tool for data visualisations

Abstract: The client in this study, Attentec, has seen an increase in the demand for services connected to Internet of things systems. This study is therefore examining if there is a tool that can be a used to build fast prototype visualisations of data from IoT systems to use as a tool in their daily work. The study started with an initial phase with two parts. The first part was to get better knowledge of Attentec and derive requirements for the tool and the second part was a comparison of prototyping tools for aiding in development of data visualisations. Apache Zeppelin was chosen as the most versatile and suitable tool matching the criteria defined together with Attentec. Following the initial phase a pre-study containing interviews to collect empirical data on how visualisations and IoT projects had been implemented previously at Attentec were performed. This lead to the conclusion that geospatial data and NoSQL databases were common for IoT projects. A technical investigation was conducted on Apache Zeppelin to answer if there were any limits in using the tool for characteristics common in IoT system. This investigation lead to the conclusion that there was no support for plotting data on a map. The first implementation phase implemented support for geospatial data by adding a visualisation plug-in that plotted data on a map. The implementation phase was followed by an evaluation phase in which 5 participants performed tasks with Apache Zeppelin to evaluate the perceived usability of the tool. The evaluation was performed using a System Usability Scale and a Summed Usability Metric as well as interviews with the participants to find where improvements could be made. From the evaluation three main problems were discovered, the import and mapping of data, more feature on the map visualisation plug-in and the creation of database queries. The first two were chosen for the second iteration where a script for generating the code to import data was developed as well as improvements to the geospatial visualisation plug-in. A second evaluation was performed after the changes were made using similar tasks as in the first to see if the usability was improved between the two evaluations. The results of the Summed Usability Metric improved on all tasks and the System Usability Scale showed no significant change. In the interviews with the participants they all responded that the perceived usability had improved between the two evaluations suggesting some improvement.