The Campaign

We created DustSee to raise awareness of the dangers of air pollution in Seoul. DustSee is an AR fine dust and air pollution app that shows the harmful particles we can’t see. More importantly, it tells people when they need to wear a mask. DustSee visualizes pollution data like never before. It uses live-sensing to calculate current location, real-time air pollution levels, wind direction and speed, as it shows the fine dust and air pollution around us. The interactive AR filters visualize the particles in three different ways, which allows people to see what’s really in the air they're breathing. It shows the types and levels of harmful pollutants currently in the air. It allows people to capture photos and videos of the animated air particles, which they can share on social media.

Creative Execution

The first part of our campaign strategy was to figure out why people don’t wear a protective mask in the first place. The local government has tried to target these people by sending out city-wide text alerts when pollution levels were high. Yet, it hasn’t done much to encourage mask wearing behavior. Upon survey and observation, we noticed that on certain days when air pollution was high the skies were still clear. This made it look like the air was fine when actually it wasn’t. This led us to our key strategy insight; if our target audience can’t see the dangerous particles in the air, we simply have to show them the harmful particles for themselves with something they always have with them; smartphones. We then gathered real-time data centers such as weather and air pollution. Then we focused on taking air pollution data and visualizing it. DustSee uses the user’s GPS to get an accurate location. Then it uses real-time air pollution and weather data and synced it to the user's location. Finally, it brought all the information together and gave each pollutant their own unique character and shape and animated them. We created three different AR filters to allow users to physically see and interact with the pollutants in the air. If the air was unhealthy, DustSee would tell you to wear a mask; and show which type to wear. Along with these AR animations, we provided real-time information on the pollutants. Here, the user could see a breakdown of the each pollutant in the air and the quantity. Once people saw how the air was, they could then capture and share videos and photos on social media alerting others to the fine dust air pollution.