Designing with Transactional Data: FTML and Money/Data Laundering

In a digital, and cashless economy, transactional data has become ubiquitous, telling and highly valuable. Yet, this data is rarely considered critically as a material for design. This pictorial presents two successive Research through Design projects exploring practically how we might design with transactional data. The first, ‘FTML: Financial Transaction Mark-up Language’ is a speculative design project and short film, which explores how value-laden ‘mark up’ of specific transactional data could underpin new services and digital applications. The second, ‘Money / Data Laundering’ adopted an approach of ‘designerly hacking’, with Point of Sale (PoS) payment card readers, to develop a web application to digitally ‘wash’ or launder specific values into an indivdual’s bank account via a symbolic transaction. Reflecting on both interventions, we demonstrate the need, and opportunities, for designers to engage critically with transactional data and financial infrastructures, to enable new forms of value(s) exchange.