#makezurich hackathon event

Reflecting on some very interesting chats I had at the #makezurich event on January 27th and on January 29th at Mechartlab, i came to think about questions related to why we measure. Expressed differently, have you thought about what the deeper lying purpose is behind what you want to measure with different sensors? Doing some research about why we measure, I came across this posting. In it, I read, for example, that one reason to measure x could be that we would like to help people use capacity well. An example: How long time during the day is a parking space not being used? Why? Or how many different cars are occupying a certain parking space per day? Why? 

Another example: How many clothes can you fit into a certain closet, before it becomes too crammed? Thinking about this example, we could then, for example, ask: Why do we want to measure that? And brainstorming this question, we would perhaps come up with responses - and/or further questions - such as: Because we would like to try to help people

• make it easier to get clothes in and out of the closet.
• avoid that clothes become wrinkled.
• get a signal when it is time to recycle some clothes.

To find out what the purpose of what you do is, i.e. why you work on the hackathon challenge you work / want to work on, check out the questions to discover your purpose mentioned below. In his thinking process, it may also be helpful for you to learn from these purpose examples.