Readings:

• „Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design“, Buxton, B. 2007, Morgan Kaufmann. 76-81.
• “Data as the new currency. Government’s role in facilitating the exchange”, Eggers William. D., Hamill R., Ali A. 2013. In Deloitte Review. 13. 18-31.
• „Interactions with big data analytics“, Fisher, D., DeLine, R., Czerwinski, M., & Drucker, S. 2012, In Interactions. 19(3). 50-59.
• „Designing Great Visualizations“, Mackinlay, J. D. & Winslow, K. Study for Tableau Software. (undated, retrieved November 2013).
• „Data-Informed Product Design“, Pavliscak, Pamela. 2015. O’Reilly

Alessa Gassmann – Data as a new currency

how much is data worth – Summary

Data nowadays is considered as an economic value, it can be bought, sold and traded. This has become even more current with the upcoming of new technologies and the enlargement of the internet. Companies earn a lot of money from selling user data.

The government is one of the biggest if not the biggest producer of data. They already regulate part of the personal data that companies use. The difference is to find out how much data these companies actually collect and share. Who collects more, google, apple, or microsoft?

Another question is what do they do with the data? The government’s intention is to have an ecosystem that leverages data to improve health. For facebook etc. we can’t really say. According to rumors, it uses its data mainly for their own benefit.

Feedback:

• minimal yet beautiful design of the slides

Manuel Leuthold – Data visualizations

the importance of data visualization– Summary

The video above shows a very pleasant visualization from Interactive Things (which was founded by former Interaction Design students!) for the Ville Vivante in Geneva. 

Manuel explained to us how important it is how interesting we visualize data. A study can be as interesting as it wants. Without an attractive design, the users won’t be interested in looking at your data.

Another thing is to include a story in how you convey your data. A data visualization without a story will bore your users.

In this example, we see a visualization about Napoleon’s march. It shows the strength, size and tells the user the story of Napoleon.

Feedback:

• great examples of data visualizations
• Nice question to start the discussion:
  • In what way do you think data visualization will change in the near future?

The presentations were followed by a short exercise. Matching our current ideas, struggles or inspirations we were asked to draw a visualization.

In my case, I tried to visualize the process of the idea development. The hatched square should symbolize the initial thought or idea. Then a process of concepts starts. Some of the squares evolve and grow, some are changed in the progress, and some are simply not followed up.