Dividual is an interactive data visualization project that creates visual representations with different forms of digital possessions.

Dividual is a project that explores people's digital hoarding behaviors and corresponding psychological effects. Through an interactive website that visualizes my digital possessions, I explore how technologies are transforming our collecting behaviors in a personal context and discuss the massive and ephemeral digital collections that bring us more anxiety or contentment.

Have you ever found that there are thousands of photos on your phone's album? How often will you look back at these photos? What happens when you change your phone? To be safe, resourceful, and reliable, collecting things gives us a lot of pleasure and contentment. Besides preserving the values of attributes and anticipating future usage, collecting is also a way for us to relive past events and express care. Material things have gradually become our extended-self that trace our life and make sense of our self-worth and identity.

The convenience of digital technology, huge storage capacity, and stable cloud support is fostering digital hoarding in many ways. In that case, how are people's collecting behaviors changing? How does the digital world influence the meanings attached to the collections and the corresponding people's extended-self? How do we create and justify our attachments to digital possessions?

View my site for more information: https://xiej295.github.io/ThesisWebsite/