This week was week 2 of my research phase, which mainly consisted of reading the book «The Visual Display of Quantitive Information» by visual analyst Edward R. Tufte. This book provided profound insight into the field of data visualization, since it defined and explained crucial terms and methods, for instance the principle of chartjunk and the data-ink principle.

My method was to go through every chapter and note important information. This information formed a very good basic for my introductory part. After finishing this book, I started «Semiology of Graphics» by Jacques Bertin, which refers in most cases to Tuftes «The Visual Display of Quantitive Information», and, additionally, provides some information on graphical semiotics and implications of frequently used forms of visualizations. Furthermore, I did some desk research on related work in the realm of installation art and data-driven installations. A very important milestone is «art+com», which is an interactive office based in Berlin. Their work is very interesting in terms of dealing with user interaction, user inclusion and communicating through metaphors.

Another important contact is Benjamin Wiederkehr, who finished at ZHdK in 2008 and now runs his own agency «Interactive Things» with its main focus on Data Visualization and User Interfaces. I am going to get in contact with him the next week to exchange ideas, methods and tipps. Furthermore, I want to conduct the surveys, now extended to the user group «mothers», since they are relevant in terms of finding appropriate metaphors for the data set. These informations are necessary and essential for a solid thesis part A.