Author: hbailey

My Data is Not My Data

I logged my data on Tuesday the 21st and decided to aggregate it according to why the data was being captured. Was I logging it on purpose to collect and analyze information about myself? Was I willingly giving it to a company because I want them to do something useful with the data? Or was the data collection a by-product (from my perspective) of whatever I was really trying to do?

Data I deliberately chose to track about myself for the purpose of personal data analysis (most of which gets shared with other entities in the process):

  • Heart rate, sleep, and steps were tracked via my smartwatch, which I never take off.
  • Daily habits completed were recorded in a habit-tracking app (manual entry).
  • Health and wellness information for the day was recorded in an app I built for women’s health tracking (manual entry).
  • Time spent on work projects on Tuesday was recorded using HourStack (manual entry).

Data I chose to give to other entities in the hope that they would use it for my benefit:

  • Listened to podcasts and music. NPR One app and Spotify track my listening habits and interests to make recommendations.
  • Drove to work and choir practice. Car has a device that my insurance company uses to track my driving and (hopefully!) reduce my premium.
  • Computer crashed. Chose to send reports to Apple to (again, hopefully) help them resolve issues.

Data other entities tracked as byproducts of my chosen activities (which were not primarily about sharing data)

  • Location was tracked throughout the day by my computer and car GPS. I know I could turn this off, but haven’t even though I don’t use it.
  • Campus facilities has data on when I entered my access-restricted office using my ID.
  • Sent a lot of email. Google has most of this data (for multiple accounts) and Microsoft Exchange has the rest of it.
  • Viewed, created, and edited a bunch of calendar events. Google has most of this data, Microsoft Exchange some of it, and iCloud has all of it (from all accounts) synced across my Apple devices.
  • Viewed, created, and edited a bunch of documents in Google Drive and on my computer (local docs are all synced to Dropbox).
  • Browsed the web for any number of things. Campus network, home network, Xfinity wifi hotspots, and AT&T cell network all presumably have lots of data about my web browsing and other internet usage, some of which is performed by background processes on my phone and computer that I don’t know are happening in the moment.
  • I don’t know where they are, but I’m sure there were surveillance cameras at many of the locations I walked or drove through.

How your worst fears stack up against reality

Do you have any irrational fears? You might discover some after checking out this interactive visualization of common fears by Inga Ting, Mark Doman, Nathanael Scott, Alex Palmer, and Ri Liu for ABC News Australia. On the page, you are first presented with a grid of illustrations of common fears, from which you are told to select the three ways of dying you fear most (I chose falling, drowning, and fire).

Terrifying grid of fears/horrible ways to die
Terrifying grid of fears/horrible ways to die

Once three fears are selected, the page automatically scrolls down and displays a bar chart of the three fears you chose, with length and a number representing how many people died of each cause between 2007 and 2016.

Deaths from my worst fears
Deaths from my worst fears

As soon as you press a key or move the mouse, the page expands the bar chart to include the entire set of fears, so you can compare the three you chose (in peach) to the ones you didn’t (in gray).

Causes of death, ranked by number of deaths (turns out my fear of falling is totally legit)
Causes of death, ranked by number of deaths (turns out my fear of falling is totally legit)

The article goes on to explain the concept of irrational fears, why we have them, and why we tend not to have such an intense, visceral fear of things that would be more rational (such as skin cancer).

The visualization’s goal is to engage the reader with factual information about irrational fears in a way that is more personal and compelling than text alone, or even text and illustrations or photos. UX issues aside, requiring the reader to select their fears and then presenting their fears in comparison to the entire data set is effective for a few reasons:

  1. By making me select my biggest fears, the story becomes personalized to me and puts the facts in the context of things I care about
  2. The interaction requires me to imagine myself dying and to imagine my own experience of fear, which rouses emotions
  3. The data is presented in a simple, easy-to-understand format (bar chart) that clearly shows the point being made (how my fears compare to reality)

The actual set of data shown is also very small: the number of deaths in Australia from 2007-2016, grouped and sorted by cause of death, with only a selection of causes displayed. The sources of the data along with some clarifications are stated in a set of notes at the end of the story. The audience is the Australian public and some of the data is specific to that audience…for example, most Americans probably don’t think much about death by crocodile. But apparently I could stand to be a little more afraid of the sun.