A Notebook of Data Imaginaries

The processes of data collection and transformation are often opaque to users. This means they rely on their imagination to make sense of the data they produce. The images data conjure up, however, tend to be homogenous and flat: black screens, ones and zeros, big server farms in the desert. For designers and researchers who work with data as a material, this small repertoire can be stifling. For device users, it can lead to a removal of agency in how they make sense and engage with the data they produce. In this pictorial, we draw from a two-year data fictionalization project to start building an expanded repertoire of data imaginaries. We worked with seven households and seven writers to transform smart home data sets into fiction stories. Based on the interviews we conducted, we present the images participants shared with us as a step towards more expressive and varied imaginaries of data.