MADD → Master Data Design

Data analysis is the first step of our work. Extracting meaning from cold facts, recognizing patterns, reaching informed conclusions and representing it all in the most suitable way is essential in an open yet rigorous approach to data

Maps are the foundation of many information design projects, both as a complementary source and as a tool for better understanding. We’ll learn about the use of cartography and its cultural significance and we will begin to familiarize ourselves with the basic concepts of mapmaking.

How do we explain relationships between things?
The representation of systems, the graphic synthesis of multiple aspects of one problem are a fundamental part of Information design. This class provides an introduction to the representation of complex phenomena, systems and networks: from the simple presentation of time to the visualization of the complex communities that are shaped by social networks.

An introduction to data visualization and infographics, bringing together key concepts and methodologies that can be applied to any project. Students will work with a wide range of information graphics with focus on common graphs, maps, diagrams, and charts, how and when to use them, and how to interpret them.

The first step of every data design project is the preliminary analysis. This express capsule will set us in the starting point –the use of spreadsheets– leveling the base for everybody.

In coordination with Data Analysis and building up from the work done, we will model a design process that will work as a template for all projects. A quick and dirty how-to for communicating with data.

You will develop a personal design project that explores how to create meaningful ways of connecting people and information through a multidisciplinary approach.
The main objective of this subject is to develop design projects that are able to have a human approach to data and communication; to bring to reality projects that use data-science but also qualitative and ethnographic research methods that uncover people’s emotions, stories, and models of their world.

In this module, you will be required to research and analyze relevant theories and methodologies related to your project. This will involve reviewing literature and identifying relevant theories and methods that can be applied to your research. You will also need to consider the limitations and potential biases of these approaches and how they may impact your project. The goal of this module is to provide a solid theoretical and methodological foundation for your project, enabling you to make informed and well-supported decisions about your design and communication strategies.

What it’s not recorded is lost. While developing your project, we will generate a report of sorts, a companion to your Data Experience where you can fit everything that might be left out otherwise. It will work as a proper part of the project, as an archive, as a creative process log where we’ll fit documentation, thoughts, interviews… whatever complements and reinforces your work and makes it relatable to others

The main objective of this course is to create a communication campaign around the joint exhibition, exploring how to expand it conceptually and narratively before, after, and beyond the event itself. Our weapons will be contemporary, radical advertising and graphic design, critical thinking, meta languages, irony, guerrilla, and whatever we come up with during the mind-blowing brainstorming sessions. Because we may blow our minds, but we’ll do it with a good sense of humor and a rooted strategic mindset.

Understanding the emergent, accidental and amorphous nature of our networked planet implies a transdisciplinary approach, and some of our traditional assumptions need to be challenged. A collective exercise to review what it means to be human and its relationship with what we call nature and technology. As traditional categories are failing to grasp our ever-changing present, we won’t hesitate to experiment with concepts and ideas, as well as taking the risk to jump into the blurriness.

A practical examination of strategies to uncover, describe, map, inhabit, and even rethink data-based systems. Our society, and planet Earth in general, has turned into a multi-layered, opaque and often accidental entangle- ment of infrastructures, protocols and lifeforms. We use them to observe and they observe us. By exploring the back alleys and the irregular stitching of the megamachine we’ll be able to tell different stories, expose injustice, and conjure up alternatives.

In this first part of a three faceted course we will discuss with relevant guests – from architects to sociologists – how data is shaping our society and if it can be steered for the common good. This would be the first step on a process that after a practical workshop will end up being a collective piece to exhibit in the Barcelona Architectures Festival.

Data Visualization we call it… but they are just pictures. We look at a simple line-graph like we look at a photo of our last holiday. It proves something: – I was there – and tells something – this is how I want you to see me. In this course we will examine and practice the graphic representation of data from its very abstract basics to the subtleties of its meaning and the elusive intentions of its authors.

We are made of stories (and bones and water, but also stories). We understand societies through them; they have been the traditional way of explaining the world. From mythology to Netflix, tales are embedded in our DNA. Therefore, it’s very important to learn how they work; stories will make designs and projects relatable to others, and they will help spread game changing ideas in a reality that is now more demanding than ever.

Information plus time equals movies. Beyond infographics and motion graphics, the moving image uses simple techniques –as old as cinema itself– constantly renewing them to new purposes.  We will study the history and practice of the audiovisual media as a vehicle for data. Through comparison, transformation, accumulation, editing or manipulation of speed and scale, the moving image is a perfect vehicle for communicating the complexities and nuances of data.

We will analyze the data collected with the sensors built in the first part of the program to complete the project, extracting conclusions and building, using several tools, a functional website that allows the public to explore the results of our investigation.

Good design can make abstract issues understandable despite differences in language and culture or format constraints. We’ll embark on practical project aimed to be published. We will design an infographic spread page under professional conditions with the guidance of Gemma Busquets.

The final part of this multi-module series will be creating an exhibition that summarizes and expands the results of the previous workshop and course.

Analogue representations are a mediation not just a simple instrument.They generate an experience between observer and information. Statistics aren’t something you can touch and turning them into abstract physical shapes can help to understand data and more importantly, have a new and relevant experience with it.

We live surrounded by sensors and displays gathering, analyzing and visualizing all kinds of information. In this two part program we will use technology, in the best DIY spirit, to work with data from the ground up, from the very beginning of the process.  We will learn the basics of programming in Arduino and Raspberry, how to choose the best platform to solve a technological project and the basics to hack an analog automatism to be applied to a data visualization project.

An interdisciplinary practice which combines editorial design, UX, web design, data visualization, interaction design, visual storytelling, and narrative to explain the complexity of contemporary phenomena to a broader audience in a more engaging and approachable way.

We will focus on one particular urban problem and develop a data based approach. A hands-on workshop that will focus in Barcelona as the place of conflict and data as a way to tackle it.

Photography is simultaneusly a way of collecting and representing data. It has been developing alongside graphic data visualization since its birth in the XIX century. What will happen to that relationship now , in the age of sinthetic creation?

The last MADD workshop consists of showing the public the experiences of the course through different for- mats. In this case, the students are faced with a real and complete expository and editorial project, an intense process that takes place in a tight time and that culminates in the Degree Show.

The human gaze has been, since prehistoric times, a data collection tool. What we see and describe contains all the information we can name… and all the information we can sense. We will use the methods and tools of drawing to turn that sensitive knowledge into expression, to turn data into information that inevitably contains emotions and desires.

Blurring the boundaries between disciplines is one of the foundations of the MADD. Our voice, our bodies are tools and the space we inhabit is our medium in this bold approach to data visualization.

The aim of this project is to create a device that represents the state of the world in any given minute – compressing time and using recognisable, everyday objects to visualize our impact in the world telling a story. From the mundane to the cataclysmic we will create a multi-scale representation of our world – a data based soundscape – that gets data closer to the participant.

We invite prestigious international designers to speak at lectures that allow us to learn about experiences, projects and case studies of different fields of design first hand.

We organize talks with famous creators of different fields that allow us to share experiences, observe design phenomena, obtain new ways of looking at things, reflections and references that enrich our interdisciplinary perspective of design.