Data Design

About Data Design

Short Description

Information is beautiful, yet can it also be meaningful, insightful, critical, or commercially useful? This is the question the students of this minor are answering by specialising their practice around the use of data as source material.

Long Description

The Data Design program aims to teach students to collect, process and interpret structured data and reshape it into virtual, spatial and material artefacts.

Data Design falls under the Commercial study profile, but students are encouraged to think critically about the social and autonomous implications as well. What can all this information tell us about our lives as individuals and communities? How does our interaction with data affect how we understand the physical world?

The core curriculum will address the main digital media disciplines (graphic design, animation, photography, film, illustration) and makes use of open and/or third party data, as well as self-generated data in combination. Students will aim to create dynamic applications that deal with complex, changing data from multiple perspectives.

There is also scope within Data Design to reach other majors (fashion, interior design, product design etc) with the development of artefacts which make use of measurable and ambient data in production and execution.

Both these approaches allow for the possibility of combining and merging data domains, interpreting information in new and innovative ways. Hence, Data Design overlaps with Digital Craft and Open Design, where research can result in the production of physical objects that make use of data collected from external sources or measuring devices.

Afstuderen

skills

• ability to collect, parse, sort, process data aquired by means of scrapping or by accessing preformatted sets of data.
• fluency in the technology of command line, HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.
• ability to design static and dynamic data into visually engaging projects.
• ability to recognize patterns and relations in data.
• ability to research an issue through the data it generates, and translate it into a critical narrative.
• ability to design the implication of your research

knowledge

• history of data design (data visualization, information design, etc) and related fields (datajournalism, quantified self, etc).
• dark side of data design (privacy, ethics, etc)
• Internet culture, sharing and production of knowledge on the Clearnet and Darknet
• the legal aspect of data design (from licenses to open data)
• Historical elements of free and open source software culture and the impact of standard copyright and contract laws on networked media
• social media theory

attitude

TODO

Keuzemodulen

NEEDS TO HAVE A DEDICATED SECTION?

Quantified Selves

1. general intro on data design with a specific example (quantified self) + assignment to track food habits.
2. look at the data collected and what can you conclude about your other classmates based on the data they collected + assignment keep on collecting data
3. look at the data, look for patterns and or singular properties + assignment draw a conclusion about data and a. either collect more data or b. formulate the pattern into a narrative to be visualised.
4. Google chart your data + play different types of visualisation
5. discuss outcomes of trying different visual methods, did you learn something new and did it change your perspective? +
6. theory: how to go from data to product within the food field (small critical hint towards tracking with albert heijn bonus card, show birgit PZI project) + sketch
7. feedback on sketches + final turn of data collected into something that is relevant to your practice, for instance a journalistic report on your food habits, an encyclopedia of week-end snacks, a ready-to-wear collection based on your food trends analysed in your group, etc.
8. final presentation + guests