I have used myself and my wife as test subjects in the last two years to understand how a couple’s conversation dynamics change over time. Even though one particular couple’s data will not amount to a larger scale insight, studying one couple gives us a zoomed view of common patterns of miniscule and mundane events. This is both a research and an art project, and some results found their way to our wedding card design.
By extracting the topics, sentiments, and volume of our conversations in different messaging media over two years, I was able to find some insights about how and what we prefer to communicate online when we are in geographic proximity vs. in remote locations. Currently I am collecting data to understand how interests diffused (if at all) between the two of us in our youtube, tv show, and music listening preferences.
Example art pieces: how our online conversation sentiment varied over two years. (blue: positive emotion, red: negative emotion), and how the volume varied as we travel out of and come back to Boston.
Our wedding card was featured in the most widely read newspaper in Bangladesh because of its unique data art based design, and we were invited to give an interview about it.
Saquib 