Thesis_Research_Brief by Jiyeon Kang

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

Wearable Data, Wearable Self. How safe is your quantified, datafied self?

https://jiyeonkang.wordpress.com/category/thesis-studio-1/

Research Brief Over the course of 1 year in DT, I have been exploring the domain of quantified self in line with self-tracking, self-surveillance, and cognitive psychology while focusing on studying data visualization to visualize biometric data and self-data gathered by diverse wearable devices and social networks. https://jiyeonkang.wordpress.com/tag/quantified-self/ (My ongoing documentation on Quantified Self)

For the first time when I explored this topic, my actual aim was to create a real-time dashboard that shows individuals’ all daily lifestyle data to help the users, who have wearable devices and use social networks actively, connect all of their data sources together to help them find hidden insights of life and holistic self-awareness for better decision making in their lives by figuring out some correlations between those life data. This thought is clearly described in my previous design manifesto below, as a data visualization designer. We are at the beginning of the age of a hyper-connected society. As the world is unprecedentedly connected, emerging Big Data provides possibilities that allow designers, engineers and entrepreneurs to create user-oriented products and services by analyzing each individual’s needs. Wearable devices and smartphone apps are gathering people’s health data and other life pattern data from their daily lives. According to futurists, by the year 2020, over 26 billion things – cars, machines, food and even domestic animals – will be connected to the internet. In this way, personalized data is explosively growing in our current society as the use of smartphones and other wearable devices is increasing. Many scholars predict that the IOT environment and wearable tech will totally change our lifestyle. I think big data can be more widely used through Data Visualization combined with interaction design and it enables a designer to make services and platforms be personalized by gathering each individual’s data and information. By analyzing data, User Experience can be focused on each user by considering their specific needs. In a flood of data, visualization and curation of data can help users organize information. As a user, I want my social network services

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

and platform services to show me more visually organized data by collecting it according to my tastes and needs by enhancing the user experience of data visualization. By gathering people’s data, platform services and social networks can give us selective information that we exactly need and can recommend us appropriate services up to individual’s needs. As a designer, I’ve been interested in how to apply new data visualization methods to produce creative displays of information up to each individual’s interest and tendency. Also, I would like to research how technology is expanding both our access to data and our ability to use and display it effectively. (A brief)

Reference: “A Manifesto As A Data Designer” by Jiyeon Kang (my design manifesto)

To achieve this goal, there were some attempts to realize this goal through practical design products during the first DT year.

Attempt 1) Quantified My Life (Budget Checking Datavis App)

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

Attempt 2) Habit Habit IoT toy machine helping for children build habits.

Attempt 3) Self-data Dashboard Apps

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

Because of the technical completion and practicality of the final products considering user experience, I didn’t launch those prototypes for actual use. But those were all good exploration for me to think about various uses and aspects of quantified self with a focus on studying data visualization of self-data. While I was working on creating those prototypes, I took an academic course named Surveillance Design to be more aware of the critical matters related to data use like privacy matters, data ownership and other philosophical - political discourses in order to make a better product. Likewise, my ongoing interest in quantification of self-data allowed me to explore diverse aspects of self-surveillance. But, after taking the class and making prototypes, my viewpoint toward self-tracking has been continuously changed. While I still believe in a practical use of the data dashboard, my ongoing research make me raise new questions: How safe are the self-tracking devices and app? How safe is your quantified self? Thus, for my thesis, I decided to focus more on critical thinking on these questions and ultimately create a speculative design that makes people think about self-data and our quantified body, instead of making a practical product that has a commercial value.

Early Prototype (I, II) The first prototype was a visual representation of my idea that highlights the current movement of quantified self by exaggerating the feature. This idea started from the speculative question: “what if we wear our visualized personal data all together and interact with other people?” The paper prototype looks a bit crude, but I imagine those data physicalization will be made out of physical computing, streaming in real time on the surface of the garment.

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

The second prototype was an attempt to envision my thought with a new question: “how to give emotion value to datafied self?” “How can I make people emphasize with my garment?” “How to gain insights from the personal data visualization as a level of artificial intelligence instead of just displaying graph?” From these question, I imagined a wearable fashion which changes its color and pattern, reacting to a user’s emotion based on life data gathered by a self-data dashboard. It also stands for artificial intelligence (AI) fashion because the idea that a cloth changes its appearance driven by personal data based on daily lifestyle means the cloth can read and predict a wearer’s mind. Technically, I’m considering to use e-textile and Lilypad (or Flora) Arduino for the final prototyping at the same time building algorithms within a dashboard UI with Javascript programming with Google deep learning or other machine learning platforms.

After sketching out two visual prototypes and having individual meetings with thesis professors, my direction has been clearer and taken its shape. At this point, I raise a new question: How can I quantify self-data and direct it towards compassion to others, fine tuning our capacity for empathy? After making the third prototype I will observe how people interact

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

with my prototype. It will convey “a story” that explains my thoughts and could be the argument itself. Also, I came up with some visual, conceptual identifiers that can clarify my project to make a further prototype. I classified those words into key adjectives.

Empathetic - Emotional Data, Emotional Textile, Synesthesia, Emotional Dashboard Individualism - Customized Electronic Fashion, Wearable Data, Self-recognition, Quantified Self Tangible - Data Physicalization, Garment as an interface, Color Changing E-textile Analytical - Fashion as a Self-data Dashboard, Quantified Self, Algorithm-based Software

Precedents 1. Media that inspire my thoughts. Your Quantified Body, Your Quantified Self (NPR Radio) http://www.wnyc.org/story/quantified-bodies/

This NPR episode is one of the important resources that equipped me of a critical viewpoint toward Quantified Self movement. Related to one of my previous project concepts of self-tracking or self-surveillance, I found an interesting radio program that changes my viewpoint towards self-tracking via wearable devices for quantifying our daily life. This episode criticizes the rising culture of self-tracking in line with quantified self by highlighting many cases that a high level of awareness of daily life induces anxiety in some ways, even makes people feel like they are in prison. 1. Her This movie “her” is one of the movies that inspired me to imagine an artificial intelligence UI or dashboard that analyzes a user’s life, gives personal advice and predicts the user’s emotion as well. Ultimately, I want to connect this kind of AI web app to wearable fashion.

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

About the movie: Theodore's life changes when his computer gets an entirely new operating system, linked to a smartphone handset with earpiece. It's a hyper-sophisticated artificial intelligence with a female voice called Samantha, played by Scarlett Johansson. Samantha is empowered to organise his life, give personal advice, make intimate suggestions. Warm, witty and sensual Samantha seems just as real to Theodore as anyone else in this atomised, digital world. Theodore falls deeply in love with Samantha, and she with him, but she is a mystery, a mystery partly signalled by the title: "her" rather than "she", the object of a man's perception and entranced bafflement.

2. Ex Machina Another huge inspiration is “Ex Machina” which is also an AI movie. It was interesting that the A.I. woman exponentially develops herself by learning more and more from the conversation with the programmer. About the movie: A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a breathtaking humanoid A.I. (Caleb, a 26-year-old programmer at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.Written by DNA FILMS)

3. Quantified Self I would say this is a creepy film that criticizes a data-obsessed life in line with a rise of Quantified Self, or self-tracking, or self-surveillance which posits a sort of truth in numbers and technology.I have been fascinated by wearable devices like Fitbit, and I’m focusing on studying data visualization. So, I have been into the rising culture of “Quantified Self.” But what if it turns out it is a scary thought to measure our everyday life by numbers? This movie is important for me because I need to be aware of the criticism to the quantified self movement and data dashboards as well.

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

2. Related Projects 1. Google’s Artificial Intelligence Fashion Project “Muse”

This AI web app creates a customized fashion based on users’ answer to a set of questions that is for analyzing users’ sentiment, characteristics and demographics.

2. Wearable Electronics: Body-Borne Technology

There is a current movement on DIY customize fashion by utilizing physical computing technology. “We now have the chance to custom-tailor the technology to ourselves instead of the other way around.” Thomas Gnahm, organizer of the Wear it Festival a nd himself the wearer of an LED jacket, talks about concepts for wearables that will soon be snuggling up to users’ bodies worldwide.

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

Annotated Bibliography

(Jenny), Jiyeon Kang. "Tag: Quantified Self." Jiyeon Kang. Accessed October 05, 2016. https://jiyeonkang.wordpress.com/tag/quantified-self/. This is my ongoing documentation about exploration on Quantified Self since last year.

@arselectronica. "Ars Electronica Blog - Wearable Electronics: Body-Borne Technology." Ars Electronica Blog. October 08, 2015. Accessed September 19, 2016. http://www.aec.at/aeblog/en/2014/10/27/wearable-electronics/. “We now have the chance to custom-tailor the technology to ourselves instead of the other way around.” Thomas Gnahm, organizer of the Wear it Festival and himself the wearer of an LED jacket, talks about concepts for wearables that will soon be snuggling up to users’ bodies worldwide.

@bof. "Is Fashion Ready for the AI Revolution?" The Business of Fashion. April 07, 2016. Accessed October 06, 2016. https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/fashion-tech/is-fashion-ready-for-the-ai-revolu tion.

By. "Quantified Self - Self Knowledge Through Numbers." Quantified Self. Accessed October 06, 2016. http://quantifiedself.com/. This film one of my important precedent that criticizes a data-obsessed life in line with a rise of Quantified Self, or self-tracking, or self-surveillance which posits a sort of truth in numbers and technology.I have been fascinated by wearable devices like Fitbit, and I’m focusing on studying data visualization. So, I have been into the rising culture of “Quantified Self.” But what if it turns out it is a scary thought to measure our everyday life by numbers? This movie is important for me because I need to be aware of the criticism to the quantified self movement and data dashboards as well.

Kwon, Yong, "Pattern changing clothing" (2013). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. http://scholarworks.rit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6750&context=theses When this E ink clothing displays different pattern, users will be able to make various styles with just one garment. In addition, Pattern Changing Clothing will help wearers enjoy expressing their

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

individuality through the activity of changing or creating styles and patterns as individual customization.

Kurbak, Ebru, and Mahir M. Yavuz. "News Knitter." A CM SIGGRAPH 2009 Art Gallery on SIGGRAPH '09, 2009. doi:10.1145/1667265.1667298. http://casualdata.com/newsknitter/index.html

Ebru Kurbak created “News Knitter” as a wearable data visualization project which focuses on

knitted garments as an alternative medium to visualize large scale data that is gathered from the daily political news.

Marcengo, Alessandro, and Amon Rapp. "Visualization of Human Behavior Data." I nnovative Approaches of Data Visualization and Visual Analytics: 236-65. doi:10.4018/978-1-4666-4309-3.ch012. http://quantifiedself.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/QS_Camera_Ready-Rapp-final.pdf

This journal articulates what is the rising quantified self movement in the contexts of the history of the development of self-knowledge and evolving technologies in self-tracking.

"NeoPixel Matrix Snowflake Sweater." Overview. Accessed October 06, 2016. https://learn.adafruit.com/neopixel-matrix-snowflake-sweater.

Pailes-Friedman, Rebeccah. Smart Textiles: For Designer: Inventing the Future of Fabrics. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2016.

Perez, Sarah. "Google’s New Project Muze Proves Machines Aren’t That Great at Fashion and design." TechCrunch. September 02, 2016. Accessed October 06, 2016. https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/02/googles-new-project-muse-proves-machines-arent-tha t-great-at-fashion-design/.

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

"The Quantified Self." - Science Fiction Short Film. Accessed October 06, 2016. http://www.thequantifiedselfmovie.com/.

Sagiv, Noam, and Lynn C. Robertson. S ynesthesia: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience. Oxford University Press, 2005. To investigate on the relationship between color and emotion, I need to look at studies on synesthesia. This book explores the overall concept of synesthesia in the context of cognitive science such as perception, attention, consciousness, memory and learning, language and thought.

Seymour, Sabine. Fashionable Technology: The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science and Technology. SpringerWien New York. I’m currently taking Seymour’s Fashionable Technology course to develop my project further. She is a pioneer in fashionable technology, a fashion that has both function and aesthetic.

Waldman, Katy. "Quantify This: Personal Data Apps Are Not the Formula for Perfection." Slate Magazine. December 27, 2013. Accessed October 06, 2016. http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/12/27/quantified_self_critique_personal_data_ apps_for_calories_exercise_sleep.html.

Ware, Colin. Visual Thinking: For Design. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008. Because of my background in visual communication design and advertising and my preference to think visually, I have been always into visual communication and visual representation itself. So I think… broadly, I should include “Visual Thinking” as one of my research areas. I’m reading a book Visual Thinking by Colin Ware for a reference. In this book, the author takes what we now know about perception, cognition, and attention and transforms it into concrete advice that designers can directly apply. He demonstrates how designs can be considered as tools for cognition – extensions of the viewer’s brain in much the same way that a hammer is an extension of the user’s hand.

Thesis Studio 1 David Caroll, Louisa Campbell Jiyeon Kang

"Your Quantified Body, Your Quantified Self." WNYC. Accessed October 05, 2016. http://www.wnyc.org/story/quantified-bodies/. This NPR radio episode is one of the resources that changes my viewpoint of Quantified Self movement. Related to one of my previous project concepts of self-tracking or self-surveillance, I found an interesting radio program that changes my viewpoint towards self-tracking via wearable devices for quantifying our daily life. This episode criticizes the rising culture of self-tracking in line with quantified self by highlighting many cases that a high level of awareness of daily life induces anxiety in some ways, even makes people feel like they are in prison.