1. Research
Data Humanism stands between data science and artistic interpretation.
While data science deals with quantitative, predictive insights, Data Humanism turns the focus inward: it looks at personal patterns, emotions, and relationships.
It invites designers to ask not only what we can measure, but why it matters.
“Data is people.” – Giorgia Lupi
Key ideas I worked with:
- Data around us → external traces of our lives
- Data about us → how systems perceive us
- Data inside us → emotions, thoughts, inner rhythms
- Data we generate and observe → a dialogue between reflection and awareness
Visual inspiration came from the works of Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, who treat data as a language — visual systems made of color, shape, and rhythm.
2. Task one - The World Around Me
Before moving into communication data, I started by observing the data in my own home.
I asked myself: What does the color blue mean in my space?
I photographed and catalogued every blue object in my apartment, noting:
- Item
- Location
- Material
- Quantity
- Use
Then, I categorized them by emotional value: practical, aesthetic, fun, emotional
This process revealed how emotion and function coexist in everyday things. Even simple objects like a blue straw or cleaning tissues carry small emotional traces — memories, routines, rituals of care. It was my first attempt to visualize qualitative data about my surroundings.
3. Task two – Between the messages
In our digital everyday life, relationships unfold between screens, emojis, and voice notes.
This project, Between the Messages, explores how love and emotional connection appear — and sometimes disappear — in the rhythm of daily chats.
It transforms one week of WhatsApp messages between me and my boyfriend into a visual diary of words, pauses, and presence.
Through color, form, and rhythm, personal data becomes a mirror of emotional exchange — making the invisible dynamics of communication visible.
Concept & Research
Inspired by the philosophy of Data Humanism, the project treats data not as a static set of numbers but as traces of human behavior and emotion.
Every chat message carries small, emotional signals: timing, emojis, media, tone.
By transforming this data into a visual language, I wanted to explore:
- How intimacy translates into digital form
- How patterns reveal emotion and care
- How silence and distance appear as part of love’s rhythm
Dataset
The dataset consists of one week of chat messages exchanged between me and my boyfriend.
For each message, I collected the following information:
- Sender (Nicola or Lukas)
- Date and time
- Length of the message (in words)
- Emoji count
- Shared media (images, video chats)
- Topic (e.g. health, love, organization)
- Time gap between messages
Visual System
Each message becomes a bubble, and each day a larger cluster.
The structure visualizes the temporal and emotional rhythm of our conversations:
- Color: Topic (e.g. love, health, organization…)
- Bubble size: Length of message (word count)
- Hearts inside bubble: Number of emojis sent
- Outlined bubble: Video chat, with mark for initiator
- Petals: Number of shared images
- Connecting lines: Time passed between messages
- Empty space: Days spent together in person
The result is both a map and a memory — a data drawing that captures how we talk, wait, and care.
4. Reflection
This expertise changed how I see data:
not as something to calculate, but as something to listen to.
By combining design, emotion, and data, I learned that visualization can be poetic — a way of storytelling that reconnects us with our own patterns.
In the spirit of Data Humanism, the project aims not to provide conclusions, but to invite reflection on intimacy in the digital age.
