When a weather satellite crashed on Mars in 1999, the 120 million dollar accident was traced back to a metric conversion mistake the engineers at NASA had made. Even if the conversion of metric to imperial units rarely has consequences this dramatic, it still remains a frequent source of error within transatlantic communication. As an expat myself, I decided to make the conversion of units the topic of my bachelor-thesis. This resulted in an iPad app and a small book that offers insight into the history of the different measuring systems as well as the relationship between the US and Germany.
The design was sort of a proof of concept, to see wether it was possible to design a useable app that worked without heavy skeumorphism and provided a way for users to get a feeling for the different units rather than precise conversions. (To put this project into context, this was at a time when iOS was still oozing with dropshadows and faux-leather, and windows 8 was just being rolled out.)
Advisor: Prof. Xuyen Dam | In cooperation with: Allan Brighton (Programming) | Title: Apples and Oranges (Bachelor Thesis) | Year: 2012