Assignment Overview
In this assignment you will draw inspiration from Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec’s project Dear Data. You will spend a period of five days and regularly collect some kind of information from your daily life. You will then illustrate the data you collected through a hand-drawn data visualization and submit the visualization along with a written reflection on the process and the big takeaways for data advocacy.
Step 1: Choose your Data
- Brainstorm a list of ideas for aspects of your daily life that you might record over five days. They should be:
- Regularly recurring in the course of a day
- Not too frequent (ie. not “how many breaths I take”)
- Not too infrequent (ie. “how many times do I take a road trip”)
- Something you have to actively collect instead of passively being recorded through a device (ie. no step counters/heart rate monitors)
- Think about the logistics of how you would collect information for each of your different ideas. Are you going to use a notepad? Will you carry this with you all the time? Your phone? Do you need to record just a checkmark for each observation or more data - ex. text, numbers, etc.? Will you need to measure anything?
- Based on feasibility and your own interest, choose what you are going to collect
Step 2: Collect the Data
- Come up with a plan for how you’re going to record your data
- Note: It might help to set periodic reminders
- Keep a running journal that documents the process of data collection. What challenges did you run into? Are you noticing any patterns?
Step 3: Visualize the Data
- You will create a hand-drawn visualization that illustrates the data you recorded.
- You have free reign to take this in any direction you want
- Note: you will not be graded on the aesthetics/design of the visualization, but on the effort you put into it.
- Here are some inspirations from Dear Data:
- Week 01: A week of clocks
- Week 07: A week of complaints
- Week 14: A week of productivity/schedules
- Week 46: A week of books we own
Step 4: Write a Reflection
In your reflection you should include the following:
- The question you decided to answer
- Some of the ideas you came up with when brainstorming and why you chose your final visualization method
- Observations about the process itself - challenges, patterns, adjustments, etc. (draw on your process journal)
- What acts of interpretation did you find yourself needing to make during the process of data collection? In what ways was your data “cooked” rather than “raw”?
- How did you arrive at the data visualization itself? What choices did you make in representing the data? What challenges did you run into and how satisfied are you with the result?
- How did this small-scale process of personal data collection compare to the “big data” approaches used by private companies, schools, or government agencies?
- What are some of your big takeaways about data assembly and how might you apply these to data advocacy topics?