Gifting Interpretations of Personal Data

Research on physical representations of data has often used personal data as its focus. A core aim of making personal data physical is to provoke self-reflections through a felt experience. In this paper, we present a preliminary study which employs the idea of gift-giving as means to explore one's online data. Our main findings report strategies to relate to a stranger's data, as well as a conflict between what people think of their online self and what others are able to find. We discuss how the gifts became platforms for self-reflection, similar to physical data models. We then connect that to the engagement of a third person (gift-giver) in the process, highlighting the potential of such involvement. In the future, we focus on how to link people's meaningful artifacts with their personal data.