✨ Owning your body’s data

Owning Your Body’s Data- Talitha Williams

Say it With Charts Studio, 2017.

1. Observations and Reflections

“Where’s the data?”
It can be seen that the speaker, Talithia Williams believes that our bodies have a way of communicating with us, in ways we don’t always consciously address.
Her belief in being able to gather data and keeping record of trends in her body’s system and functioning proved to be a very helpful practice.
I feel like it can be safely deduced that for every act accountable with the experts, in this case- the doctors, there must always be data supporting their cause or decision.
More than just that, they should be asked for proof- with data! The aspect of taking a chance and considering probability is here replaced with certainty.
Regularly recording basic parameters of the body like temperature, blood pressure and pulse really could help reason out how and why the body reacted to the illness in the way it did. It also showed how the body tends to be normally and how the trend changes/becomes abnormal- essentially helping keep a track of changes over time.

2. How does the data grow and survive?

Just the act of keeping up with our bodies, recording relevant data may take a few more moments off our day than usual, but it proved to be really helpful for all concerned parties.
It helps in making an informed, well versed decision wherein there is a better and a unanimous understanding of the problem at hand. In turn, helping them go for a solution that would suit and be agreed upon by everyone.

3. Emotions felt

Personally, I didn’t even consider the idea that every movement or change in our body or in anything in general can be associated to a mathematical value, let alone looking into its trends. It is one of those things that you know exist but you don’t really look into them.
This statistical data once collected and studied gives way to taking mathematically and logically backed up decisions having sufficient proof to answer the question- why.

4. Personal decisions that changed/influenced as a designer

The simple act of monitoring one’s own body and collecting that data was seen to be extremely helpful in Talisa’s case. As a student, I feel like this really brings emphasis on being able to ask for concrete evidence- in something as simply available as such data to be able to prove one’s’ decisions.
I also started to wonder how this task of collecting your body’s data may be made simpler or easier for people to be able to adapt to this practice.
This may give rise to more possibilities in the fields of medicine and healthcare.

5. Ideal Situation

Probably once this practice is adapted, data would have a positive impact on people’s wellbeing and they would look at their own trends and try to maintain positive readings
This should become a regular habit.