How I Turn Everyday Data into Visual Stories.

How I Turn Everyday Data into Visual Stories.

This talk begins with a simple belief: we all repeat things.

We take familiar routes. We postpone some tasks. We call certain people more often than others. We start routines, pause them, and return to them. We move through news, moods, and environments every single day.

Sometimes we write these down. But after a while, those notes sit quietly, and we rarely return to them in a way that teaches us something.

So my question is simple:

We write about our lives. But what if we could see them? Would that change our choices? Would it help us understand who we are becoming?

In this talk, I will show how ordinary everyday moments can grow into visualizations that reveal who we are and how we move through the world.

I’ll share projects built from my own routines. For instance, I will talk about how documenting my metro commute helped me notice crowd rhythms and predictability. I will also share how mapping a BMRTC bus ride helped reveal who occupies space and how that shifts during the journey.

These did not begin with large or complex datasets. They began with noticing and observing.

The talk will unpack my process:

• how I decide what is worth tracking.
• how I build discipline in data collection.
• what begins to change as days and weeks accumulate.
• how different visual approaches highlight different truths.

Along the way, I will show early attempts, iterations, mistakes, and the unexpected insights that only appeared after reflection from the visualization.

The intention is to make this practice feel accessible. Not heavy. Not technical. Something anyone can begin.

This session is for anyone curious about patterns in their own life ~ design students, data practitioners, researchers, developers, and also people who may not work with data professionally but enjoy tracking habits, keeping logs, or reflecting on how their days unfold.

By the end of the session, people will start looking at everyday life a little differently.

They’ll notice that the small things they usually ignore ~ the routes they repeat, the delays, the pauses, the habits ~ are quietly telling stories about them.

They will see how turning these moments into visuals can help them spot patterns in their behaviour, become more aware of the environments they move through, reflect honestly on their choices, and understand how others experience the same situations.

They’ll leave with,

• Simple ways to begin their own tracking practices,
• Approaches for translating logs into visuals, and most importantly,
• The reassurance that you don’t need big data or intimidating tools to discover something meaningful.