Subjectified : personification as a design strategy in visual communication

Abstract

When we encounter statistics too far removed from our personal experience, we sometimes find it difficult to imagine the real implications of that data. While we might understand the information logically, it can be hard to relate it to our immediate personal lives. In this thesis, I investigate a novel visual representation for such data, which I call Personification of Information. This alternative form of data visualization incorporates real people within the viewer's immediate physical or social environment as part of the representation. The goal of this visualization technique is to bring information that is otherwise perceived as distant and detached closer to the viewer. This design strategy is explored in three artistic projects, "What If the World were your n Facebook friends?", "Unification-A Case Study?" And "What Was the Media Lab Thinking About In The Year _ _ _ ?" They are complemented by two projects from other areas that investigate Personification as a design strategy to bring the abstract closer to the individual: "Omnivisu" uses Personification as an interface to architecture; "Giving Character to Characters" applies the strategy to augment digital typography with human expression. Additionally I formalize the findings of these projects as a set of generalized design parameters for Personification of Information.