Humanizing Big Data

During Giorgia Lupi’s speech about data, she transforms complex charts and numerical figures into relatable images. This idea of humanizing data was explored during a project titled ‘Friends in Space,’ which resulted in Lupi and her team translating astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti’s data into a user-friendly social platform.

Instead of using data to track views, locations and clicks, Lupi suggests that this information can be translated into images that intimately connect with human emotions. This can be done through visualization of numbers. By correlating a recognizable image to an arbitrary number, it ultimately changes the way people view statistics.

Adding a human touch to the world of technology and algorithms can unlock creativity while building a deeper connection between individuals and big data. This speech on data presents the idea that pairing numbers with personalized identifiers and context will provide meaning to otherwise foreign ideas.