DATA LOCATION TRACKING
HELENA MCDONALD; JOAO LOURENCO; LUKE FALLOW; SARAH YOUNG
CONTENT
01 INTRO & BRIEF
02 DATA COLLECTION
03 VISUALISATION
04 CONCEPTS
05 DEVELOPMENT
06 VIDEO
07 REFLECTION
01 INTRO & BRIEF
It is clear that our world is becoming increasingly data-driven. While governments and businesses mine our data to inform policies and marketing strategies, individuals are also able to keep track of their own behaviours in a range of ways. Digital technology and data is beginning to become part of our culture; part of the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a society, permeating not only the collective values we subscribe to as a society, but also the activities and artefacts we use to re-enforce these. Using the SPRINT design process in the course of two weeks, we were asked to design a data-informed experience.
02 COLLECTION
We had a workshop with Wikimedia staff Delphine Dallison and Sara Thomas, where we have learnt the tools to harvest their available public. They also showed us other public available data banks as a resource to work with. We were assigned the theme "location and mobility". From there, we felt curious and drawn to what specific information our own devices were collecting from ourselves. This took us to look deeper into private location data tracking. We have found out that location data is categorised as "sensitive data", and this was being collected by the services and products we were subscribing, either by the brand of our devices or the services we were using, such as maps. We have learnt how to download this collection of data and even look into the code that produces it. In some cases we had 6 years worth of information, a timeline of visited places, that after being analysed, they revealed the story of our lives...
03 VISUALISATION
For visualisation of our data collection we have surprisingly discovered tools that some programmers had made to compile this data and portray it in several ways. The most engaging one was a heat map that revealed the most visited places. By having a group discussion we found ourselves asking one another "-Why do you spend so much time here?"; "Oh, this is the place of someone that I have been seeing"... or "The vegan place I usually go to", or the location of a family member, a medical centre... this were facts that we could potentially link to relationships, food habits, health conditions and even secrets. We clearly started to see how location data could be sensitive information, and more personal than what it initially appeared to be.
DO PEOPLE CARE THAT THEIR LOCATION IS BEING TRACKED? On a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 is ‘not concerned’ and 5 is ‘highly concerned’, the participants averaged 2.75 for all the services. Only 5 of the participants were ‘concerned’ or ‘highly concerned’ about their privacy for the location- tracking services, where 11 were either ‘not concerned’, a ‘little concerned’ or ‘neutral’. Location-Based Services for Mobile Telephony: a Study of Users’ Privacy Concerns
Yes, accepting to give our data to companies can improve the services that they provide us and tailor a better experience... BUT there is also the fact that we have no complete control on when this is happening and where or who our data is going to end up with.
04 CONCEPTS
The fact that people can be so complacent and willing to give their data directed our focus in concepts.
A) EXPLOITING THE EXPLOITERS As a visceral reaction we wondered on ways to manipulate this data and get back to the system. From attaching our trackers to pigeons, to using drones in order to create profiles of higher value or different routines and stories than what we had.
C) RAISE AWARENESS It seemed that the deeper one looked into the subject, the more likely they would change their opinion on the subject. Could we hint users that there is something more into it?
B)Â ACCESS / EDUCATE The access to this personal data is often hidden or difficult to get to. Creating a public interactive point where you could place your device and directly see your activity could create a valuable educational experience.
D) REGULATE Inspired by the regulation of nutritional information on food packaging, we started to imagine systems that could, in a very quick way, tell a consumer the implications and risks of adhering to a certain service that would capture and handle their data.
05 DEVELOPING
We had initially agreed on developing concept B and create an educative experience, a way to access what is collected from us and displaying it in a more accessible way, as this information tends to get hidden by design. This would also be a tangent with concept C and would raise awareness as a consequence. . Recognising the immense variables to be designed of multiple people interacting simultaneously and overlapping their data in this visualisation station, had a complexity that realistically at that point of the week we would be unable to prototype. We have then decided to narrow down to our own data findings and associate home landmarks as shapes that would be revealed in this station, in the form of analog 3D shapes.
DEVELOPING
Recognising that third party harvesting and sharing of our data is widely acceptable because it works in the background of our lives and it is portrayed by the perpetrators as a light and positive thing, we have decided to play with this tone and distil the experience even further, even if it started to get symbolic. Using facial recognition tech (same as what Facebook uses to automatically identify you on your photos upload), a software would get a given pedestrian his/her identification from social networks and consequentially the place where (s)he spent the longest. Inspired by the artistic contraption "kinetic sculpture" from BMW, we reduced our own familiar landscapes to simple skylines. We wanted to give hint a familiar sight, and make a passersby wonder "something about this is related to me... how?"
06 VIDEO
In order to show the proposed experience we have decided to use video as prototype. With a quick filming outdoors we have then returned to studio to work on motion graphics with the software After Effects,
The video tries to show a passersby getting his attention caught for a moment, disrupting his walk, and wondering what is happening,
07 REFLECTION
While I was expecting this project to be around infographics or close to 2nd year personal Portrait project, it turned out to be more. It was great to connect real faces with Wikipedia and how they worked in the backstage/ which ethics to they align with. I have found their workshop interesting but the process of mining data from wiki services, somewhat non intuitive, as it was code based. However, still a strong tool to take into account in the future. The research findings were personally interesting, such as prying into the tracking program codes, and seeing how accessible each company made it. The outcome was severely hurt with the teams commitment to the project, as hardly there was one moment where all would be present at the same time. With a couple of days left and an ambitious concept, we felt forced to push for a distilled approach in order to be able to prototype it.
The feedback we got from our final presentation was rather balanced to our outcome, although the comment "Well, it is just a line..." revealed that the value of the proposed experience did not come across at all - a failure in our part. Although we have considered at first to create a tangible and educational experience, its complexities were too ambitious for the team to take. Hence, we have decided with that the given time and resources, to create a trigger to hint at something deeper, to potentially make users wanting to find out more. We wanted to let people know that their data is not only their, that a piece of them is out there. But veiled under a seemingly detached and ludicrous subtle experience.