WHAT MADE ME was designed by Dorota Grabkowska for the Birmingham Made Me Design Expo (15-22 June 2012) at the Mailbox, Birmingham. Commissioned by the Idea Birmingham and Birmingham City University, the installation was created to provide an interactive experience for visiting members of the public.

The project was based around a concept of information visualisation in a form of a large scale, complex data map, generated by visitors themselves.

The aim of the project was to explore what shapes the people of Birmingham by asking them these five simple questions:

What made you Think?
What made you Create?
What made you Angry?
What made you Happy?
What made you Change?

Each question was assigned to a different colour and could be answered by connecting relevant words together with a coloured thread. Almost a hundred words were displayed alphabetically in a grid, giving the participants a wide choice of possible answers.

Through this visual language, the participants were able to share their feelings, influences, thoughts and inspirations, which made them who they are today.

Over the course of the week, a multi-layered visual data map has been created, concluding the Birmingham Made Me Design Expo.

The project has won the Most Original Exhibit Award at the Birmingham Made Me Design Awards 2012.

WHAT MADE ME has been recently published in Infographics - Designing & Visualizing Data by Sandu Publishing.