Our lives are increasingly shaped by data: how it is defined, collected and used.
As data becomes the fabric from which we design systems, often through methods like
machine learning, concerns have been raised on how values and ideologies permeate data models,
who benefits from them, and how well they represent reality.
Data is often taken as a given, either as an existing dataset or collected through
standardized practices of measuring, with design decisions behind data production
left unquestioned by interaction designers. Each decision makes some things more visible,
enabling certain possibilities for action while constraining others.
But by looking at data as an object that can be designed, we risk challenging the notion that it
is possible to derive observer-independent knowledge with a direct correspondence to
entities in the world, an epistemological stance known as representationalism.
This causes problems since data is particularly useful as a material when
it can be trusted to accurately model a particular phenomenon in the world.
In seeking an onto-epistemological ground for proposing a designerly
way of approaching data as a material, we turn to Barad
Barad’s agential realism offers a potential alternative to the
conundrum of whether the outside world can be reflected and mirrored,
instead pointing to the contingency of all human activities, instruments and observations,
and how these are implicated in defining the phenomenon of interest.
Let us consider the act of measuring our own pulse using our index finger
on the wrist. In this gesture, our own bodies get split into two:
one is a measuring apparatus, and the other is the object being measured: the throbbing of
the arteries. Pulse emerges as the result of this process of mutual orientation and co-constitution.
With this sensibility, making a distinction between the world and the apparatus,
the subject and the object, is an active choice that Barad calls an “agential cut”. In
measuring our own pulse, we enact an agential cut between the parts of our body that are measuring,
and the others being measured, stabilizing the world in a way that allows for pulse to emerge.
In the paper, we look at how agential realism can play out in design research
through five case studies where designers work with the urge to pee,
location data, breathing patterns, and skin conductance
Here, I will briefly cover two.
In one case study, a designer engaged in an autobiographical
process of data-gathering of urinary habits over a period of 6 months,
aiming to model the urge to pee, and to understand whether that urge could be predicted.
Initially, this phenomenon was defined through an agential cut
separating the body from context, and the data log contained only the amount of liquid and time.
Gradually over time the designer became aware of how much coordination is spent on urination
within daily life and everyday encounters with others. For example, she became aware
of how she would often go to the toilet before feeling like urinating due to uncertainty about
proximity to appropriate facilities in the near future, or how going to the toilet was
often an excuse to take a break from work, go for a walk, or interrupt social encounters.
Consequently, she had to rethink the agential cuts as the project went along,
bringing "bodily experiences" and "context" more closely together,
resulting in adding new notes around the social and material context entangled with
the bodily function of peeing. Thus, the phenomena being studied (urinary habits)
and the measurement apparatus (data logs and how to read those) gradually shifted.
In another case study, researchers working on inferring location from cell phone metadata
built two apparatuses for producing data. One relied on paper, aimed at producing a “ground
truth” of the researchers’ self-reported stops and routes. The second apparatus
relied on specially developed applications to collect cell tower IDs with timestamps.
By comparing the notes taken for ground truth, researchers became aware that,
for example, a commercial centre was seen as a cut-through by some who simply passed through
it on their way to work, and by others as a place where one could stay for a long time,
by for example working from a café. These notes were compared with network logs,
letting the researchers examine differences and discrepancies between the two streams of data,
and between people. One researcher, living in a remote area, barely registered movement
in the network logs while another, living in a city, could register movement inside his home.
Diffractive engagements with data about people’s movement and location led to agential cuts between
lived experience of navigating and occupying places in relation to the data produced from
different apparatuses, highlighting differences between how places can be defined differently,
and how network data is unequally distributed between geographical regions,
with both representativity and privacy implications.
In all case studies, designers tested different ways of orienting sensors, people,
and environments to each other, both progressively changing the definition of the phenomenon being
measured while rehearsing how different agential cuts could be made to respect human differences.
We call this “diffraction-in-action”, signaling a move beyond reflection,
where the goal becomes to document patterns of difference, testing how different ways of
becoming with the world and with sensors, can produce different forms of data.
How can we engage in working with data diffractively,
and what might that entail in terms of design practice?
As diffraction emerges in all case studies, data is “lived with,” engaged deeply with, explored,
questioned, experienced and scrutinized through different methods, tools and technologies,
in different contexts, entangled in everyday life.
Diffractively engaging data requires a slow, long-term process. Resisting
the impulse for efficiency, can help surface, articulate, and explore practices around data.
Rather than prescribing a specific method for conducting these slow engagements, our case
studies illustrate different design methods in allowing moments of diffraction to emerge.
We show how first-person methods within soma design, such as autobiographical design,
can foreground the designer’s body and experience over time, problematized in relation to data.
We also show how combining first-person with second
person methods over time highlights differences in how different
bodies and behaviors are registered differently by sensors and data sources.
Third-person methods that inquire into adopting,
appropriating, and understanding data into everyday life can also play a role
in scaffolding new relationships with sensing technologies and data, during design processes
In common, these methods can be used to articulate thick descriptions of
how data is woven into practices, or can be used as a material to create new ones
With regards to tools to support diffraction, we draw from the case studies to exemplify artifacts
designed to make data available to be experienced in everyday life, in
multiple contexts and by many people. To achieve these characteristics, these artifacts should be
designed to be both concrete and open for constant adaptation, experimentation and appropriation.
We hope that our work inspires others in engaging in critical,
diffractive design research showing alternative ways of approaching data as a design material
attentive to how data is entangled in everyday life.