Monitoring and tracking of data is taking place on a global scale and a very personal one. With sleep trackers, activity monitors, heart monitors and many other data-logging devices, each one of us is a walking log of numbers. This information came to us from PSFK in their article, “Attractive Metadata Could Be The Golden Ticket To Dating.”
New research from Newcastle University indicates these numbers can also work in the social and relationship part of our lives. Metadating relies on handwriting. The 11 participants who showed up on the first ever metadating event had to fill out a form where they got to decide what data they wanted to share.
Common entries included diet, amount of steps per day, aesthetic preferences and activity charts. Participants also got to choose in what way this data was represented: in tables, pie charts, or, as a popular choice, graphs.
How they chose to present their information was interesting. Some chose unusual and interesting data to record, while the others felt they should be more honest and accurate in the data they represented. For all participants, the hand-drawn profiles were popular, more so than existing digital tools.
While certainly not a thorough scientific study, it does reveal how metadata is created and used in our lives.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
