Please note: I did not revise this section. This is really a diary and might not make any sense to you. I recommend to just scroll through as the pictures speak for themselves and have a chronological order.
After a first draft to indicate my research interest I started to dig deeper into the critical design aspects mapping of social data.
Why would it matter to map social data? Why would it matter in general to map data?
I came to the conlusion that making sense out of data which we generate ourselves by simply living our every life can leads to more democracy and it is definitively a domain which can improve knowledge and the life of many people. This topic has been relevant for many years already. Otto Neurath for example also tried to make knowledge available for people who don`t have time or the ability to digest complex topics.
The basic question was: Why do I want to map social behaviour?
Just mapping data doesn`t necessarily make data available to everybody. Especially when it comes to so called big data sets. Even when mapped down they are still hard to understand.
In the not so far away future everybody will generate data even just by the type of clothes he is wearing and the amount of hughe data sets will be tremendous. So, after some further research I discovered the book “Visual Storytelling”.
I identified Storytelling as a very powerful methodology to communicate data and I analysed how storytelling can contribute to mediate and simplify the mapping of big data, especially public data which should be understandable for everybody.
So I wrote a second paper to dig a bit deeper into this topic of storytelling for sensemaking and sensemaking in general.
After I identified aspects of truth and sensemaking as a part of storytelling I was able to contextualise my research further.
We can understand our public persona as a set of stories to be discovered with storytelling.
This made me having a look at storytelling techniques for big and complex data sets and I stumpled upon a research paper from the stanford university. It describes storytelling techniques for Data Visualisations.
The final Context
Why do we need data visualisation and where ?
“We have an urgent need to use Visualisation for socially relevant purposes”, p.31..”Putting information in peoples hand when and where it counts, with purpose of helping” - Andrew van de Moere
How can I make sense out of data, especially public data ? And which role does storytelling play in this?
Designers today in the field of information visualisation have a bigger repsonsability than designers of the past. With data visualisation they create content while in the past they designed already available content.
Today, designers make statements with their design. The ability to misinform or eventually spread lies entails a hughe responsability.
In this respect Designers can learn a lot from Journalism.
Researching, reviewing, analyzing and contextualizing are now part of the daily work of a designer.
Making sense out of behaviour related data is such a field where the designer has such a responsability.
When it comes to the communication of behaviour there is a very specific responsability included which is related to the fact on how we, the human beings, process information in social situations. Social Psychology told us how we react on the beahviour ofthers. Our individual behaviour is always infuenced by other people, groups and even bigger social entities. In the moment where a designer makes “sense” out of a specific data set he automatically manipulates other people in a certain way.
So instead of showing users of digital applications pre-designed visualisations of social behaviour we maybe should the users themselves allow to make sense out of behaviour related data? This would however mean that everybody can have access to the behaviour of other people and it goes maybe a bit too far.
Eventually we might enable users at least to make sense out of their own data.
As an experiment I tried to make sense out of my personal data. This, in the end turned out be very difficult as many services allow you to quantify yourself and to “understand” yourself better. But they would not allow you to change the way how you make sense out of yourself.
These services would tell you a story about you instead of letting you tell the story about yourself.
So I decided to visualise my own data in order to create a tool to discover myselves and my public persona.
As already mentioned, it is really difficult to get access to your digital identity and I think it will be a long way until I will be able to meet
my digital counterpart. Ideally it will be an identity which is based on code which I encrypted myself. The way how I encrypt myself might already decide on my data can be used. But we are far away from this moment. So far, the only data about myself are somehow those which are publicly available and define a certain image about me. This might be completely different from what I personally want it to be.
Public Persona
However, I decdided the idendity, which just reprents the data I produced to be mapped down, is not enough.
I would rather focus on the public persona. The image I created of myself. The public persona is a bit more than just the digital identity. It is connected to perceptions.
This part of my work was influenced by a documentation I saw on the topic of Metamorphosis.
Find my elaboration here: My Public Persona
>> Digital Identity and Public Persona
With my work I want to suggest a new way of looking at our publicly available data, I want to suggest to discover it through the Eyes of Ovid, the old greek poet. In his work Metamorphoses he describes a world which sounded like complete fiction. It is a world in which “picking the wrong flower can lead to a total loss of the self” and to a transformation of the own body. In a very bizarre way this image has more actuality than ever. A few wrong steps mediated in the wrong context can lead to a complete new image of the self which can affect our well-being.
How did I get here?
My whole work got influenced by project work I conducted in Portsmouth in the unit Digital Futures.
>>> My projects
During this unit I understood that I have to improve certain skills in the context of Information Design and Typography. For this reason aspects of visual design in Data Visualisation are worked on very intensively.
My elaboration on visual Design can be found here
Cognition, Awareness and Perception
Perceptions are different from facts as they can be distorted by culture or even if someone is disabled. So as a next step I pushed my research from the Layers project a bit further. I invited a bunch of people for a meetup and asked these people about their perceptions of Berlin. This way I created my personas.
What is Berlin for you?
Concept Development
Description
What I actually did
Two weeks ago I went to a processing Jam where I explored myself the idea of a swarm which I was exposed to in my Digital Futures project.
Why?
A swarm reflects the human behaviour in many ways. Under the aspect of Metamorphosis this seemed to be appropriate to me.
>> Metamorphosis, Swarming and Synesthesia
I realised very quickly that creating a swarm is very easy with any kind of shape.
As some other people had the idea of visualising sound I had the idea to combine these two streams and makse something like flicking sounds.
And yet again, another guy made it happen: And voilà the flocksounds were born which fit completely my theorethical framework so far.
In order to get savyy with the processing code I started playing around a bit.
The code is a mash-up by itself and I searched for more code bits, which I could add to implement my idea. So I found a menu in the book: Generative Design. It has no function yet but serves as a placeholder.
I also started varying the background.
I started to use a picture which I created myself.
As I had taken this picture myself it already made my whole experience more personal.
After this, I set myself the goal for one day to seed in at least one set of data generated by myelf.
The easiest I could find was my list of friends connections.
I downloaded a file which I called than friends.txt.
With some further research I found out how I can count the lines in this text and so I could import the number of my friends on facebook and give this number to the variable which defines the amount of flocks/ birds. This I process can be designed dynamically. Instead of a text file I could use a Google Spreadsheet. This way my number of friends would always be up to date whenever I run this script.
And finally I had my friends flying with my over this beautful landscape in Cuba.
As a next steps I did some tweaks and modified the circles.
Concept Development
I was so excited about what I was doing that I suddenly had to make a step back. With Pentecote and an additional day off I decided to spend some intensive days on re-framing my theoretical context. These 4 days were pretty intensive. The major thing I have done was getting order in my head and mapping out all the topics again. I used a bunch of post-its for that.
This structure I implemented in the Navigation of this Knowledge base. Based on these post-its I got some clarity on what I actually have done . At the end of this topic maps are my experiements. I did the same with these and mapped them out.
Based on my previous experiments and the theorethical Framework I am working on now, I decided to do another intensive concept session. Now with clearity on my personas and all this new knowledge.
I came up with 3 drafts (pretty free from whether they will be possible like this or not).
After 1 hr I came back to my drafts and started to write on post its what differentiates and what combines these ideas. Where are the connections?
Based on this post-its, I decided to make a short-list of two, than again tree ideas and to verbalize these.
Me and You in the digital Space
> Public Personae Visualisation.
Michael maps his friends and than triggers a search about himself. Via a menu he can define up to which extend the information being noticed by his friends sounds harmonius or not. Each flock presents a search result about himself. Clicking on the flock/bird would open a search result while interacting with the sound fields, which represent his friends would open their soundnetwork with their friends and a search about them… but with Michael`s settings. So that Michael can compare whether their friends sound is harmonius, based on Michaels perception.
Related research:
http://newsmap.jp/#/b,e,m,n,s,t,w/es_ar,au,de_at,pt-br_br,ca,fr,de,in,it,es_mx,nl_nl,nz,es,uk,us/search/all/Angela/
http://klout.com/corp/how-it-works
http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data-protection-malte-spitz
http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
https://www.facebook.com/markus.burkardt?ref=tn_tnmn
http://www.allanalytics.com/author.asp?section_id=1641&doc_id=259770
http://www.yasni.de/markus+burkardt/person+information?sh
http://create.visual.ly/graphic/facebook-insights#_=_
The more friends you have, the better it sounds
Communicating with Big Data: Let the data create a symphony by applying semantics.
> Compare Perceptions with Metahphors via Google Search
Describing something complex like the impression if a landscape is difficult. Metaphors can help mediating these experiences into the word of other people. Trigger a Google search and see how consistent is your perception with the perception of others. By defining a metaphor the user triggers a search. Cuba is like a DREAM. User typed DREAM. Search string is “Cuba is like a DREAM” + “Metaphor”.
Each result is represented as a flock. If results from a cluster, they create a soundfield, so results with a semantic connection can create sound. The more people use a similar metaphor the more sound you get.
Compare Perceptions
http://visual.ly/huffpost-politics-election-maps?view=true
http://wonderwalker.walkerart.org/index.html#
http://www.mapping-museum-experience.com/ueber-das-projekt/kurzbeschreibung
http://www.mapping-museum-experience.com/medienspiegel
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/emotions-which-there-are-no-english-words-infographic
http://www.nand.io/visualisation/emoto-installation
Hear my Semantic Profile
Trigger a and define data about yourself. They float around. By the time you hover over a cluster with your hand (recorded by a webcam), these flocks make sound. You can interact with this cluster now, and see the story about yourself.
Related research
http://www.generative-gestaltung.de/M_6_4_01_TOOL
http://www.bizarbin.com/amazing-bird-flock-shapes/
http://newsmap.jp/
http://flowingdata.com/2010/06/08/where-the-tourists-really-flock/
http://faculty.utpa.edu/fowler/papers/Fowler_Huerta_Fowler_MSV_2012.pdf
http://www.urbaninformatics.net/projects/city-flocks/
http://boogie.alfahosting.org/website/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/test45.jpg
http://boogie.alfahosting.org/website/?p=820
http://www.learningprocessing.com/examples/chapter-16/example-16-13/
http://www.learningprocessing.com/examples/chapter-16/example-16-14/
Concept Video for Hear my Semantic Profile (flocks still don`t work as they should)
Each of the flocks creates a cluster sound. The cluster sound is a topic which is often around. Infromation, which shape your public persona.
Next steps:
I want to work on all the three ideas and see how they can each other itself.
While two of the drafts will be concept studies, one of them will be an impementation.So one part of my experiment will happen on a theoretical level, free from constraints and another one will happen on an implementation level.
I think this is a good combination.
I want to re-use one of these concepts as an entrypoint -paradigm to my knowledge base.
