New Challenges for Data Design

Book excerpt: The present work provides a platform for leading Data designers whose vision and creativity help us to anticipate major changes occurring in the Data Design field, and pre-empt the future. Each of them strives to provide new answers to the question, “What challenges await Data Design?” To avoid falling into too narrow a mind-set, each works hard to elucidate the breadth of Data Design today and to demonstrate its widespread application across a variety of business sectors. With end users in mind, designer-contributors bring to light the myriad of purposes for which the field was originally intended, forging the bond even further between Data Design and the aims and intentions of those who contribute to it. The first seven parts of the book outline the scope of Data Design, and presents a line-up of “viewpoints” that highlight this discipline’s main topics, and offers an in-depth look into practices boasting both foresight and imagination. The eighth and final part features a series of interviews with Data designers and artists whose methods embody originality and marked singularity. As a result, a number of enlightening concepts and bright ideas unfold within the confines of this book to help dispel the thick fog around this new and still relatively unknown discipline. A plethora of equally eye-opening and edifying new terms, words, and key expressions also unfurl. Informing, influencing, and inspiring are just a few of the buzz words belonging to an initiative that is, first and foremost, a creative one, not to mention the possibility to discern the ever-changing and naturally complex nature of today’s datasphere. Providing an invaluable and cutting-edge resource for design researchers, this work is also intended for students, professionals and practitioners involved in Data Design, Interaction Design, Digital & Media Design, Data & Information Visualization, Computer Science and Engineering.