Shera Hyunyim Park

As more data is recorded, stored and analysed, we produce various kinds of spatial data in our daily lives – travel behaviour, energy usage, noise level, and emotional attributions from crowdsourcing. The digital data have become increasingly ubiquitous, producing unprecedented insights and mapped as a form of ‘big data’. These have changed users’ perception of place and informed their knowledge, thus helping users make better decisions, potentially producing new ways of knowing and being in the space. 

Describing data of cities is a crucial step to both understanding people’s activity, planning and designing cities in urban environments. It is not simply describing places of space but is revealed as a system of networks and flows. The urban experience is represented through interconnected location-aware services and platform, generated between the human and places interaction.

The project-based research develops a new perspective on mapmaking, which leads map development has become a subject of service design. The project explores from a designer’s perspective, how map portraits service system of physical place, can be used to facilitate value co-creation and inform meaningful decision-making tool for cities.