Normally is a design and research studio

Putting data
to good use

We bring design, research and engineering together to explore and exploit the potential for data to benefit people, society and the planet.

We design, research, innovate, experiment, prototype, speculate, develop strategies, make tools, create knowledge and run pilots in order to explore, exploit, understand, develop, improve, experiment and challenge data products, services, capabilities, strategy, science, models, efficacy, stewardship and consequences.

Data Exploration #01

I just Googled my bank balance.

September 2019

We hooked a Monzo bank account up to Google so that we can use it to search inside our personal financial information.

We built a browser extension and taught it to listen out for ‘personalised’ searches. Searching for ‘balance’ brings a generic Google result, but searching for ‘My current balance’, for example, recognises this as a personal request, and displays the current balance from the Monzo account.

Google's mission statement is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." But there are worlds of information that Google does not - and as yet can not - organize. We're talking about our personal information. We've been bringing design to policy projects, exploring data mobility, asking what opportunities a truly data mobile world might surface? What if we could use Google to search inside our own personal world of information?

We’re currently exploring many more opportunities like this for a data mobile world. We’re happy to share more if you’d like to get in touch.

Data Exploration #02

Cabin Analytics

We've built a privacy-first, carbon conscious analytics service that enables owners to see the environmental impact of their websites.

Cabin doesn't use cookies or require consent banners. It's lightweight and faster than Google Analytics and it's compliant with all data privacy laws worldwide.

We pursued privacy-by-design principles, ensuring that visitor data cannot be used for targeting ads or identifying individuals. We also chose sustainable cloud infrastructure that allows 100% of our electricity consumption to be matched with renewable energy.

Get a free account at withcabin.com

Data Exploration #03

The carbon cost of data

March 2019

We're on a long term expedition to understand the social and environmental consequences of data-driven services, speculating on what we might be able to do about it.

In the demo shown here, we illustrate an idea about how services like Instagram might make design decisions that dramatically reduce the energy use and carbon cost of their service. What if services like Instagram had a daily carbon footprint allowance? Could we use image/facial recognition to describe photos (including people's names or locations) and then allow users to reveal the content they're actually interested in?

In the process of crafting these speculations, we also discovered that what might be better for the environment might also be better for our mental health.