Hi #SmartCommunity friends, in this episode of the Smart Community podcast I have an incredible conversation with Prof. Alberto Cairo. Alberto is the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the University of Miami and Director of Visualization at the Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing, plus author of several influential books including The Functional Art, The Truthful Art, How Charts Lie, and The Art of Insight.

In this episode Alberto tells us about his work with the National Hurricane Center designing graphics to convey hurricane risks to Miami’s diverse multilingual population. We discuss why visualisation design needs decision-making processes rather than rigid rules, and why those decisions should be subjective but never arbitrary. We talk about collaboration being essential since designers acknowledge they often know nothing about the data and must ask experts tons of questions.

We finish our chat discussing the gap between expert designers and general public readers, encouraging everyone to just get started making graphics when they wish a story or spreadsheet was clearer. As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it.

What we cover in this episode:

• Working with the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service to create more effective graphics for conveying hurricane risks to diverse audiences speaking Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, and Russian
• Moving beyond rules and principles in visualisation design toward individual decision-making processes based on goals, audience assessment, and data nature
• The life expectancy baseline example that shows why you need baselines closer to actual data to avoid flattening meaningful information
• Decisions being highly subjective but never arbitrary—you must have good reasons and justify choices rationally even when rules don’t exist
• How collaboration is essential since designers acknowledge they often know nothing about the data and must ask experts 
• Visualisation appearing at two points in the analysis cycle: exploratory (discovering patterns for yourself) versus explanatory (communicating known insights to others)
• The gap between the experts, expert designers and general public readers
• The hockey stick chart and warming stripes as influential climate visualisations that impacted Alberto
• The Pudding’s abortion access maze project using gamification for emotional impact
• Alberto’s advice to ‘just get started’ making graphics, especially if you come across a story or a spreadsheet that you think could be made clearer with a visualisation
  

Quotes:

“Storytelling, in my playbook, is just one of the many ways in which we can structure the delivery of data, delivery of information to a particular audience…[A story is] essentially a linear narrative presentation of information that requires you or to decide what to present, what not to present, and then how to present it step by step to a particular audience.”

“For many years the visualisation community was too obsessed with rules and principles. I think that is misguided. There are really not many rules in visualisation design the same way there are not many rules in writing. Besides grammar and symbols, what you do is essentially up to you.”

“You’re making a subjective decision as a designer. Subjectivity is something that scares off people from STEM fields…You cannot be fully objective in this type of representation. You will need to make choices that are highly subjective, but these choices should never be arbitrary.”

“You acknowledge that you know nothing, and then you ask the people who do know something. Visualisation design is a collaborative process. Before I can design a graphic for you, I will need to ask you tons of questions about the nature of the information, the data, the goals, the main insights, the peculiarities, the exceptions, the uncertainty.”

“I really appreciate when academics present complex ideas in elegant language, beautiful language, entertaining me, right?  Because I believe that it is possible to present very complex, very deep ideas without losing any depth, using elegant language. So if we appreciate that when we read, why shouldn’t we appreciate that when we see graphics?”

 “If you can make a message understandable and clear without losing any depth, and on top of that you also make it enjoyable. Why is that a bad thing? It’s a good thing!”

Links:

• Alberto Cairo’s books: The Functional Art, The Truthful Art, How Charts Lie, The Art of Insight
• National Hurricane Center USA
• Elsie Lee-Robbins papers on learning objectives
• The hockey stick chart (climate change temperature variations)
• Ed Hawkins’ warming stripes visualisation
• The Pudding
• Joyful Infographics by Nigel Holmes (CRC Press)
• Alberto Cairo’s Brazilian election radar chart

Connect:

Connect with Prof. Alberto Cairo on LinkedIn

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn and watch on YouTube

Podcast Production by Perk Digital

 This podcast is recorded on the traditional lands of the  Kabi Kabi peoples and edited on the lands of the Gaibal peoples.   I pay my respects to traditional owners of country and their elders past and present. I also extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today.  Here on the Smart Community Podcast, we talk about data, technology, communities and the future. First Nations peoples have been sharing knowledge, caring for country, and telling stories for tens of thousands of years.  I honour that deep connection of storytelling and community connection as we continue our conversation together here today.

Disclaimer

The views, opinions, and perspectives expressed by guests on The Smart Community Podcast are solely those of the individual speakers. They do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of the host, Zoe Eather, or of The Smart Community Podcast as a whole.

Any discussion of ideas, products, organisations, or services by podcast guests does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by the host or the podcast. Listeners are encouraged to form their own opinions and seek professional advice where appropriate.