{"628016":{"#nid":"628016","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Restoring Data\u0027s Sense of Place","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBy Michael Pearson\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EJohn Britti, a fifth-year student in computational media, used to have what he calls a \u0026ldquo;woefully average\u0026rdquo; approach to data.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Literally average, in fact,\u0026rdquo; the Atlanta resident said. \u0026ldquo;I focused mainly on finding what was normal about the data, what the aggregate looked like.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EAs Britti notes, that\u0026rsquo;s not a necessarily bad way to approach data, but it\u0026rsquo;s far from the only one. Enter Yanni Loukissas, an assistant professor in the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.lmc.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ESchool of Literature, Media, and Communication\u003C\/a\u003E, who is looking to change how people view the avalanche of information that surrounds us. Britti studied with Loukissas, and found a new way to look at information that makes him a more well-rounded student.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Yanni pushed me and my class to look at the weird extremities of data as much as the aggregate,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s interesting about it and does its strangeness reveal some kind of systemic abnormality in the data as a whole?\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EA former architect, \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/people\/faculty\/loukissas\u0022\u003ELoukissas\u003C\/a\u003E is working toward a sense of place to information design, arguing for a design ethic that encourages a belief in the idea that \u0026ldquo;All Data Are Local,\u0026rdquo; which also happens to be the title of his most recent book.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Data aren\u0026rsquo;t placeless,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;We like to talk about open data, the transparency of data, which suggests that data work anywhere, that they offer these immediate insights to those who have the tools to decipher them. I offer a different view, which is that data are just a starting point, a way in.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;What I\u0026rsquo;m suggesting is that people adopt the sensibilities of qualitative analysis to what is traditionally quantitative work with data,\u0026rdquo; he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EFor instance, while Facebook or Zillow might see data as pixels in a bigger picture, Loukissas sees data more as the index to a book.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;An index can tell you something about a book, but it is not the whole story. It\u0026rsquo;s the same with data. There are often deeper, broader sources of knowledge that lay beyond data,\u0026rdquo; Loukissas said. \u0026ldquo;Data are just the traces.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Ch2\u003EData Settings, not Sets\u003C\/h2\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ELoukissas\u0026rsquo; work has ramifications in a variety of settings. It provides a critical framework that can be used to evaluate how big technology companies collect, package, and reuse data from millions of sources.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ELoukissas is particularly critical of Zillow\u0026rsquo;s use of data because of the company\u0026rsquo;s practice of ingesting millions of property records meant to serve the needs of local tax assessors and residents. That data is then transformed through an algorithm that estimates and predicts home values, figures he says are created using data meant for another purpose and stripped of its original context.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EFor Loukissas\u0026rsquo; information design students, the concept of data locality serves as a way to consider new and different techniques for presenting data. He cites the example of \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/bear71.nfb.ca\/#\/bear71\u0022\u003E\u003Cem\u003EBear 71\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E, an interactive film that represents data and the context of its production to help tell the story of an ursine resident of Canada\u0026rsquo;s Banff National Park.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;It\u0026#39;s such a great example of presenting not just the data set, but the data setting. There\u0026#39;s so much more that\u0026#39;s going on there than just these videos that are captured,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;And you learn a lot about the relationship between the cameras, between where they\u0026#39;re placed in the landscape, and how the story unfolds across that landscape. So it really takes seriously this idea that the setting matters. Data aren\u0026#39;t just something to be extracted and mined for their own patterns independent of the origin.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Ch2\u003EThe Map Room\u003C\/h2\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/gvu.gatech.edu\/research\/labs\/local-data-design-lab\u0022\u003ELocal Data Design Lab\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp; in the Technology Square Research Building contains the tactile representation of Loukissas\u0026rsquo; work.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EWith funding from the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/dilac.iac.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EDigital Integrative Liberal Arts Center\u003C\/a\u003E (DILAC), four students working with Loukissas set up the the Map Room in 2018. It was inspired by the first map room, built in St. Louis by artist Jer Thorpe, now Loukissas\u0026rsquo; collaborator.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ETechnologically, it is simple. A sliding overhead projector displays a map onto a large sheet of craft paper rolled out across a table. Participants interact with the map by using colored markers to trace the map contours or add data on topics of interest to them: from tax assessments, to traffic, to crime, to education.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Because it\u0026rsquo;s about place, and they live there, they\u0026rsquo;re in a position to ask, \u0026lsquo;Is this data aligned with my own experience and knowledge?\u0026rdquo; Loukissas said. \u0026ldquo;If not, what\u0026rsquo;s wrong? What\u0026rsquo;s missing? Is the data outdated? Is there an error? Is it reading the wrong indicator?\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe process, Loukissas says, helps participants absorb the larger lessons he is trying to impart about data: that it is not necessarily objective, or complete, and that place plays an important role in understanding what they really mean.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EFor Britta, working with the Map Room was illuminating.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;I think the Map Room really hits home the notion that data collection isn\u0026rsquo;t done by abstract mechanical entities,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;The human touch, be it compassionate or reckless, permeates throughout. Obviously, the map room is explicitly about folk data collection, so it\u0026rsquo;s less structured by design, but I think that\u0026rsquo;s just a simple way of exposing how messy the process of data collection can be.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Ch2\u003EData Toolkit for Georgia Tech Students\u003C\/h2\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EIn addition to the Map Room, Loukissas has created a data toolkit for \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/serve-learn-sustain.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EServe-Learn-Sustain\u003C\/a\u003E designed to encourage students across campus to think about how they use data.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003EThe \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/serve-learn-sustain.gatech.edu\/civic-data-guides-thinking-critically-about-digital-public-records\u0022\u003Etool\u003C\/a\u003E encourages students to consider the data\u0026rsquo;s origins, purpose, and audience, think about how the data is structured, how it has been used elsewhere, and what ethical considerations use of the data may pose.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ELoukissas also asks students to conduct an interview with someone involved in the creation, management, or use of the data to understand more about how it was created and used.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026ldquo;Students are often asked to work with unfamiliar data sets, but they aren\u0026rsquo;t encouraged to see the people and places beyond the data,\u0026rdquo; he said. \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m hopeful that this tool can help usher in a new sensibility about working with data.\u0026rdquo;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003ELMC is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAssistant Professor Yanni Loukissas brings an architect\u0026#39;s sense of place to data, arguing that \u0026quot;data aren\u0026#39;t placeless.\u0026quot;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Assistant Professor Yanni Loukissas brings an architect\u0027s sense of place to data, arguing that \u0022data aren\u0027t placeless.\u0022"}],"uid":"34600","created_gmt":"2019-10-23 19:54:44","changed_gmt":"2019-10-23 19:55:26","author":"mpearson34","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2019-10-23T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2019-10-23T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"628014":{"id":"628014","type":"image","title":"Yanni Loukissas in the Map Room","body":null,"created":"1571860195","gmt_created":"2019-10-23 19:49:55","changed":"1571860226","gmt_changed":"2019-10-23 19:50:26","alt":"Assistant Professor Yanni Loukissas talks with visitors in the Map Room.","file":{"fid":"239139","name":"rInxvJDw.jpeg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/rInxvJDw.jpeg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/rInxvJDw.jpeg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":487701,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/rInxvJDw.jpeg?itok=zCSBqAAF"}},"628013":{"id":"628013","type":"image","title":"Visitors using the Map Room","body":null,"created":"1571860064","gmt_created":"2019-10-23 19:47:44","changed":"1571860064","gmt_changed":"2019-10-23 19:47:44","alt":"People talking in the Map Room","file":{"fid":"239138","name":"c3EMFe_q.jpeg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/c3EMFe_q.jpeg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/c3EMFe_q.jpeg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":598782,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/c3EMFe_q.jpeg?itok=ZdtLPqCJ"}}},"media_ids":["628014","628013"],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"},{"id":"1283","name":"School of Literature, Media, and Communication"}],"categories":[{"id":"151","name":"Policy, Social Sciences, and Liberal Arts"}],"keywords":[{"id":"178825","name":"Yanni Loukissas"},{"id":"167943","name":"School of Literature Media and Communication"},{"id":"182757","name":"data studies"},{"id":"182758","name":"civic data"},{"id":"182759","name":"data design"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39511","name":"Public Service, Leadership, and Policy"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EMichael Pearson\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\nmichael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\n404-894-2290\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["michael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}