Author: haleymei

Master of City Planning student within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT.

President’s Day – Becoming a data point

Below is a log of potential data points I created by interacting with the world and technology on February 19th, 2018.

Data collected/created on my devices:

  • Phone
    • Browsed FaceBook, multiple times in the day
    • Used FaceBook Messanger to send and receive messages.
    • Check new email messages in the Gmail application
    • Used safari to check my MIT email, opened new messages and replied to one
    • Googled movie times for Black Panther at the AMC Boston Common theater
    • Browsed Instagram, used the explorer feature to look at new accounts and dog pictures
    • Received and opened Snapchats
    • Health data – steps and floors gained
    • WhatsApp – opened new group messages
    • Used the Transit app to check bus times, allowed location services to know where I was
    • Photos created celebrating partners birthday
  • Computer:
    • Created a new Microsoft Word doc and saved it to Dropbox
    • On DropBox, uploaded two documents onto Stellar, downloaded multiple PDF’s for classes and stored them on my DropBox
    • Used Spotify application to listen to a Spotify generated playlist.
    • Rented a movie from iTunes with my AppleID and iTunes gift card money
    • Used Asana website to create new tasks and mark some as complete
  • PS4:
    • Opened HBO Go app, watched TV Series Big Little Lies
    • Opened YouTube app and watched two videos
  • House:
    • Water and electricity usage in apartment by me and my partner

Data collected/created in the world:

  • Travel data:
    • Charlie Card used on E Green Line, at Kendall red line stop, and on the 1 bus
    • Captured Security camera footage from multiple trips.
  • Lunch:
    • Physical receipt from lunch
    • Data created in operating system of Veggie Galaxy for food ordered
    • Debit card transaction for meal
  • Out about town – security camera footage at Pandemonium, Bookstore, Cheap-o records, AMC Boston Commons
  • Birthday memories for my partner, birthday wishes created in the world

Contributions to California’s Proposition 47

Social policies have always been tied to a deeply political process. This web of campaign contributions related to Proposition 47 in California was created by Len De Groot and Paige St. John. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times published an article describing how donors can influence public policy and law through charitable grants and direct financial contributions. Prop. 47 was designed to reduce criminal penalties for drug use and petty theft. Each of the five major donors (The California Endowment, Ford Foundation, Chuck Feeney, George Soros, and Roseburg Foundation) gave grants to organizations that then made financial donations to organizations who supported Prop. 47. The visualizations shows in red the direct campaign contributions and political advocacy in support of Prop. 47. The grey arrows show advocacy grants given and received by organizations as related to the five major contributors.

Interactive feature showing the grant amount, year, and purpose.

The goal of the visualization was to show how money could be travelled through multiple hands to support different campaigns. It accompanied a larger narrative article in the L.A. Times that described how charitable grants could be used to influence public policy since they are not reported the same way campaign contributions are. The audience of this visualization is Los Angeles Times readers and residents of California. Much like an investigation map often depicted on crime shows, the web of contributions directly shows the ways each organization supported Proposition 47.

Investigation mapping has become a common scene in television, as depicted above in AMC’s Breaking Bad.

The visualization shows the five major contributors on the outside, framing the inner web of grants, financial donations, and advocacy. The visualization is engaging and visually striking. At first glance, the reader can quickly gather a basic level of information. Since the visualization is interactive, readers can further their engagement with the information presented – finding out the year a grant was given or amount of the donation.

Visualization: “The Big Campaign: Prop 47 is part of larger push”

Article: “Prop. 47 puts state at center of a national push for sentencing reform”