The programme received one of the world’s most significant digital learning awards and combines flexibility with intensity, bringing together in-person sessions and digital learning formats. According to the jury, Data Experiment did more than develop data interpretation skills. It created a genuine employee learning experience, opening up new possibilities for learning and self-reflection through a richly layered, exploratory process. 

For Magyar Telekom, employee training and education, along with the ongoing development of knowledge-transfer formats, are strategic priorities, playing a key role in maintaining employee competitiveness today. Launched in 2024, the programme was developed in close collaboration with the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. 

The project drew on a wide range of data sources, from Telekom’s internal business data to personal datasets, most often explored through quantified-self approaches.  As the process unfolded, data-driven narratives emerged through diverse data-visualisation techniques, using information drawn from smart devices, statistical outputs and subjective self-tracking. 

Throughout the programme, MOME researcher Mihály Minkó supported participants as both instructor and mentor, contributing short thematic lectures alongside group-based and individual mentoring. The completed data objects were presented at the closing event of the programme during Magentaland, Telekom’s employee day, where several thousand members of staff were able to see the finished works.  

In 2025, a selection of the work was shown at the Budapest Design Week under the title Healthperiment , highlighting that even though countless apps and striking visual dashboards help us track our physical and mental wellbeing, the real question is what stories these numbers and charts can tell, what meaningful connections they reveal, and how they might help us look after our health. 

The works showed how data visualisation can function as a tool for awareness, health maintenance, and self-reflection. Personal observations of physical and mental states, habits, and daily routines were translated into thoughtfully crafted, often tactile data objects. 

A number of pieces focused on emotional states, stress, mood swings, and sleep patterns, using personal and introspective datasets. Emovere turned a multi-day emotion diary into a colour-coded wind chime, while NeuroBalance gave shape to suppressed tension and imbalance through a data silhouette reminiscent of a voodoo doll. The Journey Itself, based on Gábor Rakonczay’s ocean-crossing expedition, traced direction and distance, while other works explored sleep-related data, including Dragon Constellation, Data Among the Stars, and the painterly installation Four in the Flow of Data Glow. 

A different set of works shifted the focus to physical activity, everyday routines, and the question of wearability. These ranged from a reworking of cycling data in the form of a bicycle to YouTube Data Lamp and Tower Game, which built on patterns of music listening, alongside the AI visualisations of Life Meters based on screen time, reading habits, and step counts. Together, they show ways of reading everyday data with greater subtlety. 

The programme also includes the DataBeads Workshop, recently awarded a silver medal at the international Information is Beautiful Awards. Focusing on data physicalisation, the workshop moves information out of digital interfaces and into wearable form; in this iteration, personal datasets were turned into jewellery. The workshop was developed by MOME researcher Mihály Minkó and ELTE social researcher Eszter Katona. 

The Data Experiment initiative was led by MOME researcher Mihály Minkó, alongside project manager Natália Pass.  

The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design works regularly with partners from the for-profit sector, from small and medium-sized enterprises to large corporations. The university’s Business Community Partner Programme provides the framework for these collaborations, offering member companies access to emerging talent while supporting future-oriented thinking within their organisations. MOME’s design-driven approach contributes a set of perspectives and methods that differ from conventional business thinking. By drawing on its innovation practices and problem-solving methodologies, the university supports partners in responding flexibly to a constantly changing environment, whether the focus is user-experience design, data physicalisation and visualisation, or material innovation.