Would my life make for a nice infograph?

Today I was thinking about data visualization. I scrolled through the “Safe your Privacy” Contest for the Greens and once again marvelled about the invisbility of data. Where is all this stuff we want to keep secret and how does it look like? When I was seventeen and got my first mobile I always wondered about where all the words in the text message went and how on earth they’d ever come back to my friend’s mobile next door. Were all the words packed in nice little bundles? Or even split up in the different letters, streaming in out of universe? I am totally honest now with you: I am still not sure about that stuff…It’s mystery!

Thinking about data protection and a cool, comprehensive campaign for awareness rising I once more wondered about how all this data could be visualized in a way that makes people think about where their data goes and how much of their data is being collected. Speaking in the words of the 17 year old Frieda: Is there a huge data bundle that represents the whole Frieda? Would my life make for a nice infograph?

Well, thanks to some crazy technolgy I was able to try that out at http://www.ionz.com

Other people like Tim Graham took manual personal data collection to another level, see here. But new means and ways of data visualization can not also serve to visualize your daily apple consumption – it is for example also used to track the (alarming) Evolution of Privacy on Facebook. Which brings me back to our case at hand: how can data be visualized in a way that makes people aware of the risks they are taking when spreading their data everywhere in the net, when shopping and when walking the street?

Have a look at these articles for inspiration:

Smashing Magazine: Data Visualization

Mashable: 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools

Webdesignerdepot: 50 Great Examples of Data Visualization

and of course Cool Infographics

Also this video gives a nice introduction into data visualization. “Do not fuck with graphic designers!” (I am just quoting…)