DATAdeserts: How to make hidden subjects visible on the digital map?DATAdeserts: How to make hidden subjects visible on the digital map?

Local governments and businesses collect a lot of data, but there are still plenty of subjects about which digital information is lacking. So-called data deserts include the incidence of loneliness, how many people are willing to do volunteer work, and what kind they'd like to do. At Dutch Design Week 2016, the DATAstudio, an initiative of Het Nieuwe Instituut and the city of Eindhoven, will hold a design session on how we can make these hidden topics visible on the digital map. Officials, designers, data specialists and /"regular/" citizens will work together to answer this question from 1.30 to 5pm on Thursday 27 October at the Designhuis in Eindhoven. With this session, we aim to bring the people and stories of the data deserts into the public debate and local government policy. Participation is free, but please register at datawoestijnen.eventbrite.nl.

Albert Jan Kruiter (cofounder, Instituut voor Publieke Waarden) will act as moderator of the design session. Participants will consider questions such as what kinds of digital data and other types of information are needed to chart data deserts. They will analyse stories collected in the Eindhoven working-class neighbourhoods of Woenselse Heide and De Tempel. Which data deserts can the participants identify? And how, in concrete terms, do they think they should be charted? What would they need to do so, and with whom could they make it happen? What do their proposals aim to achieve? Professor Tsjalling Swierstra (Maastricht University) will give feedback on the proposals.

This design session is a DATAstudio activity. In the DATAstudio, Het Nieuwe Instituut and the city of Eindhoven work together to address the question of how we can build a smart society, not just a smart city. In other words, how can citizens and neighbourhoods effectively use data and technology? The DATAstudio organises a range of activities, mainly in the Eindhoven working-class neighbourhoods of Woenselse Heide and De Tempel, and provides input for the research programme The State of Eindhoven, which looks at how the smart city relates to the participatory society.

The DATAstudio is also one of the exemplary projects featured in the city of Eindhoven's exhibition at the Town Hall during Dutch Design Week. The exhibition spotlights the changing relationship between citizens and government and looks at how design can help us to make the transition to a participatory society. Fragments from personal stories of several residents of the Woenselse Heide and De Tempel neighbourhoods help us to see what kind of data is generally known but also illustrate the gulf between anonymous data and personal experience.

During Dutch Design Week, along with the DATAstudio projects, Het Nieuwe Instituut is also a co-organiser of the New Material Award, to be presented on 22 October. In partnership with the Netherlands consulate in New York, the institute's International Visitors' Programme is also staging a DDW press trip to allow US journalists to get better acquainted with the Dutch design field.

DATAdeserts
Dutch Design Week
Thursday 27 October 2016
1.30-5pm
Designhuis, Eindhoven
Language: Dutch

More information in The Staat van Eindhoven webmagazine

For more information or images, please contact Chantal Defesche, Department Marketing, Communication, Commercial via c.defesche@hetnieuweinstituut.nl or t +31 (0)6-29514704.