A Panopticon on My Wrist: The Biopower of Big Data Visualization for Wearables

Big data visualization – the visual-spatial display of quantitative information culled from huge data sets – is now firmly embedded within the everyday experiences of people across the globe, yet scholarship on it remains surprisingly small. Within this literature, critical theorizations of big data visualizations are rare, as digital positivist perspectives dominate. This paper offers a critical, design-informed perspective on big data visualization in wearable health tracking ecosystems like FitBit. I argue that such visualizations are tools of individualized, neoliberal governance that operate largely through experiences of seduction and addiction to facilitate participation in the corporate capture and monetization of personal information. Exploration of my personal experience of the FitBit ecosystem illuminates this argument and emphasizes the capacity for harm to individuals using these ecosystems, leading to an exploration of the complex professional challenges for user experience designers working on visualizations within the ecosystems of wearables

Sheep Updates 2015 - Moora

This session covers thirteen papers from different authors: 1. The Sheep Industry Business Innovation project, Bruce Mullan, Sheep Industry Development Director, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia 2. Western Australian sheep stocktake, Kate Pritchett and Kimbal Curtis, Research Officers, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia 3. Tedera - a perenial forage legume to reduce your supplementary feeding in summer and autumn, Dr. Daniel Real, Senior Plant Breeder, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia 4. National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) for sheep and goats - what is the NLIS database? Jac Pearson, Biosecurity Officer, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia 5. Myths, Facts and the role of animal welfare in farming, Lynne Bradshaw, president, RSPCA WA 6. Latest research and development on breech strike prevention, Geoff Lindon, Manager Productivity and Animal Welfare, AWI 7. Lamb Survival Initiative and 100% Club, Katherine Davies, Development Officer, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia 8. Subsidised disease investigation pilot program, Kevin Hepworth, Program Coordinator, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia 9. Using genomic technology to increase genetic gain, Stephen Lee, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, University of Adelaide and Sheep Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) 10. A case study of sheep breeding using the latest genetic and genomic technology, Dawson Bradford, Producer, Hillcroft Farms, Narrogin WA 11. Economics of feed lotting - to feed-lot or not?, Lucy Anderton, Economist, Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia 12. Sheep industry traineeships - encouraging a new generation of farmers, Jackie Jarvis, Consultant, Agrifood Labour & Skills 13.Opportunities and challenges facing youth in the sheep and wool industry, Ben Patrick, Yarrawonga Stu

History, power and visual communication artefacts

The role visual communication plays in disciplining and governing our thoughts, identities and behaviours has seldom been given the attention it deserves in historical investigation. This article argues that visual communication artefacts are a valuable source of historical evidence, particularly for historians who are interested in the interplay of ideology and power. Artefacts are approached from the epistemological position that they cannot be value neutral. The countless artefacts we see and use in daily life constantly reinforce or contradict our beliefs, values and self-identities. It is in reaction to this constant push and pull with the artefacts around us that we form, maintain and re-form our understandings of the world and of ourselves. This article presents a theory of how visual communication artefacts are imbued with the governance ideologies of the time and place in which they were created. It argues that visual communication artefacts disseminate governance ideologies through time and space, in ever lessening degrees of discipline and control. For the historian interested in power, ideological shifts or changing popular attitudes, visual communication artefacts are therefore a rich, largely untapped resource. In order to frame the argument, this article begins by outlining my deconstructionist perspective on the role of historians and histories. This is followed by an argument for the Foucauldian understanding of governmental power and discourse technologies as robust theoretical foundations for a theory of how discourses become embodied in artefacts. It concludes by suggesting the opportunities for using discourse technologies (embodied governance) as a framework for investigating the role of artefacts in power exchanges

Teaching User Centered Design and Content Through Image Tweets: A Social Constructivist Approach

By designing image based social media, students can gain rapid, hands-on understanding of user experience design and content principles. This paper provides an overview of a pedagogical research project on using image tweets in a freshman design class taught in a journalism school, with the goal of introducing students to principles of user experience design and content

Governing Identities: Neoliberalism and Communication Design in 1990s Victoria, Australia

In 1990s Victoria, Australia, communication design played a complex role in neoliberal government policy and local identity. In keeping with neoliberal principles, the purpose of local government in Victoria was radically reframed, from a partner in Australian democracy to the service-oriented business arm of state government. A swift and significant change in the visual representation of Victorian local governments coincided with and influenced this process. Communication designers were hired en masse to design logos to replace the seals and coats of arms traditionally used to represent Australian local governments. An extensive survey of Victorian emblems before and after local government reform reveals trends in the form and content of post-reform logos that this paper argues aided the state government’s neoliberal reframing of the role of government. Government logos, and communication design generally, play an important, and as yet seldom explored role in mediating governmental power

Developing an Interdisciplinary, Discursive Methodology to ‘See’ Government Emblems

Design historians frequently struggle to place design artefacts that are ‘outside of the realm of consumption’ and do not readily fit into the accepted historical design canon. This is in part due to the limitations of commonly used methodologies. This paper discusses the formulation of an alternative, discursive methodology and its application to a historical study of government emblems. Discursive methodology facilitates consideration of government emblems simultaneously as design artefacts and political symbols. It does this by contextualising the emblems within the massive changes faced by the local design industry and local government in mid-1990s Victoria. The research thus avoids a common criticism of design histories, the object/canon bias. Close study of Foucault's work along with the work of Foucauldian scholars reveals the importance of his views on and approach to historical investigation for design historians. This paper discusses these theories, formulates them into a workable methodology for historical inquiry, and then discusses the application of the methodology to the development of an interdisciplinary history of government emblems

A Brand New Approach

These days, there isn’t much that can’t be branded. Our country is a brand (imaginatively named Brand Australia); government legislation is judged in terms of brand value (the recent renaming of the Work Choices legislation due to damage to the “Work Choices brand” for example); even schools, art galleries and charities are branded. Discussion within the graphic design industry about branding these traditionally non-commercial activities reveals a host of professional concerns about the role graphic designers play in, and the broader implications of, brand work. Many of us feel deeply uncomfortable with our contribution to this seemingly unstoppable force and its relentless encroachment into territory close to our hearts. This discomfort is only compounded by the central role of graphic design in the application of brand strategy. The profession’s dependence on the sheer volume of design work generated by branding and re-branding renders us not just dirty by association; we find ourselves to be rolling around in the trough. This distasteful observation is dependent upon assumptions about branding and graphic design’s role within it that are worth closer inspection

Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research

Psychology is without doubt a broad, deep and well-established research field. Its status as a field that is part-health care, part-science and part-humanities gives psychological research broad terrain to explore, and these explorations regularly provide headline grabbing findings with broad impacts. While it is respected for these strengths, to the uninducted observer, psychology does not come to mind as a field in which diverse visual experimentation readily occurs. The pairing of ‘visual methods’ and ‘psychology’ in the title of this book is perhaps initially surprising. Nevertheless, it contains 22 articles on psychological research that involve significant visual elements at some stage of the research process. These articles document research from a broad range of sub-fields within psychological research including conversation analysis, discursive psychology, narrative psychology, personal construct theory and psychoanalysis