Digital traces as tool of a human-centred design approach

Today humanity generates 5 exabytes of data every 12 hours, through devices that are now extending of our skin, our mind and our existence. The hyperconnected society generates digital traces that, for those who are able to read them, describes the reality of the existence of people, their habits and their needs. Digital traces of online life, the life in which we exist for most of our time - probably coming into the future to live in continuous online flow -, are readable signs of problems related to every aspect of people life’s and therefore citizens. Knowing how to read and understand these traces - data - means knowing how to listen society and its needs, and above all the city and its citizens, the starting point for a human-centered design.