Bio
As part of my Envisioning Module at the University of Europe for Applied Science, my fellow students and I were tasked to envision with data: to create new products, interactive spaces or propose speculative design scenarios using data structures. The overall theme that we were asked to respond to was the concept of Data Mirrors. This theme led to my team and I to create the product EmotionUs, an emotional state tracking application that records and documents its users emotional state, and how it changes over a period of time.
What is a data mirror? This theme was left for us as indviduals to decipher, with the intention of us determining our own specific definition as a group. The supporting narrative that was given to us was as follows:
Data has become one of the most important monetary and social currencies of the 21st century. With significant amounts of our life experience spent online, data has also become the primary means by which to characterise our sense of self and personal identity. Products and cultural movements that have resulted from this deluge of data, like the Quantified Self movement, have often taken a positivist approach by capitalising on the potentially transformative power of personal information. Conversely, its commodification is precisely why many designers and technologists have responded with products and digital interventions to ensure that personal agency is maintained in society.
THE TASK: Research, conceptualise and design a product, digital ecosystem or interactive material intervention that responds to the theme Data Mirrors. Your project can span the diametrically opposed extremes of a commercially focussed product to that of a speculative art intervention.