Data-agents: Envisaging Meaningful Representations of Personal Data as Part of Everyday Life

Abstract

The huge amounts of personal information that people produce daily has encouraged them to engage with their data in creative ways through visualizations or even physicalizations of their personal data. In this context, the act of sense-making is one of several challenges that arise when investigating the emotional and temporal qualities of personal data through an experience-centric lens. This is because the way in which people make sense of data and the way in which they make meaning out of data are primarily personal challenges, and hence, complex to unravel. In this thesis, I focus on meaningfulness, the part of meaning-making that relates to feelings. Through different projects, I have aimed to discover forms, functionalities, and spaces that meaningful repre-sentations of personal data could inhabit in everyday life. Using an expansive Research through Design approach, I build on the concept of data-objects, which are affective physicalizations of personal data that resemble everyday objects in appearance. The data-objects presented in this thesis are intended for personal use while always considering personal data as an inherently social phenomenon. I present findings from qualitative studies that have explored meaningful data representation in everyday life through different lenses. My first study focused on self-tracking data, and using object-theatre methods invited six people to use their most cherished possession (physical artifact) as means with which to imagine speculative combinations of personal data and everyday objects. In my second study, I used an auto-ethnographic approach to explore meaningful personal data as design material, to imagine meaningful data representations in the context of long-distance relationships. My third study was based on three projects that used data-objects to explore questions around the ownership of personal data and self-presentation, experiences behind physiological data, and women's menstruation. The aesthetics and form of data-objects pose intriguing and provocative questions in relation to these three topics. The first two investigations contribute to defining data-agents, whereas the third investigation contributes to strengthening the definition of data-agents as reflective mundane data representations through a synthesis of two HCI methodological frameworks. The contributions of this thesis are both conceptual – through the concepts of data-objects and data-agents – and practical – by outlining design considerations that can be applied in the design of artifacts that represent personal data. Last, this thesis may be of relevance for HCI scholars who work in the fields of personal informatics, data physicalizations, and human data interaction with a focus on the affective qualities of personal data representations in everyday life.