Feeling the Numbers: Exploring Emotions in a Quantified World

Description

We live in a culture that measures everything. Our steps, sleep, heart rate, calories and even moods. These numbers promise insight, yet they often shape our emotions in surprising and subtle ways. In this workshop, we are looking at the quieter story that lies behind the numbers: How data shapes the way we feel and understand ourselves? Proud? Guilty? Frustrated? Pressured?

Feeling the Numbers is a creative, research-informed, playful and hands-on workshop that invites participants to explore their emotional relationship with digital technologies. Through guided storytelling and creative clay sculpting using Play-Dohs, we map the emotional highs and lows that apps and smarwatches introduce into our daily lives.

After a round of introduction and a short warm up game to stimulate creativity in the group, attendees team up and start working with crafted scenarios. Attendees reflect on their real-life experiences and sculpt the emotional journey of the given scenario using color coded Play-Dohs (e.g., red for guilt, blue for pride). After each group present their sculpture and the rest of the room reflecting on it through my guidance and questions, in the next part, groups reimagine how personal data can support wellbeing in a more humane and meaningful ways using Play-Dohs.

Overall, this workshop blends behavioral science, human-technology interaction and creative facilitation in a playful way. It is engaging, intellectually stimulating, and accessible to everyone, no artistic skills required.

Benefits

• Increase self-awareness and healthier digital habits
• Playful problem-solving
• Deepened insights into how digital tools shape emotions and motivations
• A shared and reflective experience that brings people together
• Encourages the out-of-the-box thinking
• Sparks curiosity
• Refreshing break from routine (attendees step away from screens and dashboards and use their hands and imagination)