Find the stories in your data

Data. Information. What is it good for? Why should you care? How can your company benefit?
I believe in a future where information, knowledge, and understanding will be more accessible to the masses. In a future when we are able to dive into complex subjects and have a discussion without having a university level degree in the matter. Data visualisation can help companies and government in decision making, and allow it to be easier, more accurate, transparent, and democratic. Learning for kids as well as adults is a life-long journey, and it should be something visual, experimental, about building, experiencing, and doing, rather than passive, textual, or lonely. See, for example, how the concept of evolution can be taught through visuals and by building something on your own: Critters.
Make it visible
Do you have information that nobody in your company has seen? Do you want to communicate that information to a wider audience? Are you looking for more fact-based decision-making? Information visualisation can be a powerful tool in making something visible that nobody has seen before. When working with data you can look for stories in the data and may discover something that you never thought of before, new opportunities and possibilities to improve customers’ experience, to save, or scale up operations. Information visualisation can make us understand scale, relations, and effects much better. A grim but a good example of how little we understand about scale if shown only in numbers: The Fallen of WWII.
Make it playful – Facilitate learning, make people remember
Allowing users to explore and change information rather than look at static visualisations can be very effective. When people can explore and play with data they are creating subjective interpretations of the data and making the end results look different. Virtual reality can be a good tool in helping people to understand broader concepts, structures, and it facilitates learning on your own. People should forget that they are learning something new.
Convincing your customer and your employees
Data analytics and information visualisation can provide a wonderful set of tools for various industries, companies, and government. When data is visual it connects with our visceral senses and can provide an emotional response which in effect facilitates learning and remembering. Data visualisation is the truth delivered beautifully.
Have you been able to shift thinking and start a change by “just” visualising data? We’d love to hear more.
Do you have a complex data set that you would need to communicate to your employees or customers with ease and effect? Service design coupled with data analytics, and world-class visualisation skills can start you on a new journey.