Drawing Data Work
Yanni Loukissas, metaLAB, Harvard University

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, astronauts on-board the Apollo 11 lunar module, narrowly accomplished the first moon landing despite a series of disruptive alarms from the digital guidance computer. We know now that the program alarms were inconsequential. However, the burden of monitoring and interpreting those data distracted the team at critical moments, nearly forcing them to abort the mission or risk a fatal crash. This early event in the development of human-computer relationships foreshadowed widespread public concerns about the integration of computing into everyday work. Since Apollo, issues of distraction, authority, and trust have troubled digital interactions with data. Surgeons struggle with increasing demands on their attention; indeed, they must monitor data in proliferating digital forms while simultaneously executing complex manual tasks and managing an ad hoc team. Architects quarrel over what constitutes an adequate digital model and who has the skills, creative sensibilities, and access to data necessary to construct it. Curators of material collections including libraries, archives, museums and arboreta rail against the transformation or loss of knowledge through digitization. I seek to understand and aid workers as they endeavor to merge, modify or replace older virtues and norms with the values of an emerging digital culture. This talk addresses the question of how to study work in the technological moment. Using the historical example of the Apollo 11 landing, I will demonstrate how I have used data visualization as a form of inquiry into the micro-physics of human-computer relationships. My presentation will address a number of issues, including how to integrate qualitative and quantitative sources, animate data through graphics, and allow for multiple narratives to adhere. This research contributes to a timely and long-term ambition: to bring design methods to bear on the study of knowledge and creativity in digital culture.%0A

Bio:
Yanni Loukissas is a Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he teaches courses in Architecture as well as Art, Design and the Public Domain. Originally trained as an architect at Cornell University, he subsequently received a Master of Science and a PhD in Design and Computation at MIT. He also completed postdoctoral work in the MIT Program in Science, Technology and Society. He is the author of Co-Designers: Cultures of Computer Simulation in Architecture (Routledge) and a contributor to Simulation and its Discontents (MIT Press).