New Year, New You, New Data
By: Claire Santoro
Tags: Newsletter, Data Physicalization, Data Visualization, New Years Resolutions, Dataviz

New Year, New You, New Data

Can dataviz help us achieve our resolutions?

The end of 2020 is nearly upon us, which means it’s time for…New Year’s Resolutions! Are you the kind of person who makes resolutions? Do you stick with them? And, most importantly, do you use dataviz to help you out?

We’re planning a Nightingale theme week later in 2021 that will be focused on personal data collection and visualization, and we want you to write all about it. How do you use dataviz to help achieve your goals or encourage self-reflection? Do you turn your data into data art, à la Dear Data? Do you use bullet journals? Do you think in terms of Objectives and Key Results, like Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic (see Episode 13 of her Storytelling With Data podcast)? How does dataviz help you, personally?

To give you enough time to collect personal data [Ed. note to self: New Year’s Resolution — start bullet journaling], we’re not planning to run the theme week until the spring, so watch for a call for submissions in a few months. In the meantime, good luck to all those setting resolutions!

While we’re on the subject of self-evaluation, perhaps you’re wondering why Nightingale is so fond of theme weeks. First, we see more new writer submissions when we provide a topic. The other answer is, well, we’ve looked at the data. Readership and engagement go up, which means more people are learning from the insights you, our writers, choose to share. For example, during our recent Data Sensification Theme Fortnight, Nightingale daily site visits got as much as an 18 percent boost over typical daily averages. Our daily target is 2,500 site visits and we saw five days above that target during this theme. Kudos to those of you who contributed!

Writers, you can help drive engagement by selecting strong lead illustrations, considering Medium’s tips for your titles, and setting subtitles that explain why people should read your article.

Happy New Year to all! The ‘Gale will be back in your inbox in January.

Trivia

Question from the last issue of The ‘Gale: What everyday activity uses all five senses?

Answer: Eating! You see your food, smell it, touch it (at least with your mouth), and taste it, all while hearing it go “crunch” or “slosh.”

For the next question, let’s see if you were paying attention during our Data Sensification theme fortnight:

What common household item did one of our writers use to demonstrate scale? Was it a) a plastic turtle, b) a LEGO brick, c) a sprinkle, or d) a Big Mac?

Look for the correct answer in our next issue.

In the Wild

Fun visualizations and dataviz-adjacent content from around the interweb:

A visualization from The Ideas Report that explores how COVID-19 affected the creativity of 35,000 people. Visualization from Gabrielle Merite, source: https://www.gabriellemerite.com

Infographic from Reuters’ “World’s biggest iceberg heads for disaster,” source: https://graphics.reuters.com/CLIMATE-CHANGE/ICEBERG/yzdvxjrbzvx/index.html

Scarily accurate pie-chart humor from Ann Friedman’s collection, source: https://www.annfriedman.com/piecharts/

Daily chart from The Economist confirming what many of us already know :), source: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/27/playing-video-games-in-lockdown-can-be-good-for-mental-health

In Case You Missed It

My Plastic Footprint: a Physical Data Visualisation Project

When graphs don’t elicit the empathy a topic deserves, what can you do? Kat Greenbrook explains that she turned to data physicalization as a way to communicate the marine lives lost because of one individual’s — her own — annual plastic waste. In 2019, she kept and recorded every piece of plastic she would have thrown away. This project is the result.

Turtles made from an individual household’s plastic waste.

Engaging with the Senses through Data: Spotlight on Brian Foo

Data visualization artist Brian Foo spends a lot of time thinking about “non-visual data visualization.” In this interview, Jennifer Li chats with him about the advantages of communicating data via other senses and his work with libraries and museums to make public information more visible and accessible.

Navigating the Green Book is an interactive experience that allows visitors to visualize a trip using the Green Book.

More from Nightingale

What Gordon Ramsay Taught Me About Data Visualization

What If You Could Touch Data?

Telling Stories With Data & Music

How to Create Wonder with Data and a Physical Object

Building Physical Maps…with LEGO

Who Is Your Chart For?

Positive Numbers: Data, Journalism, Science, and Research, with Beyond Words

Six Chart Design Lessons from Visualizations of COVID-19