The Stories Behind a Line: how — and why — I designed a visual narrative of six asylum seekers’ routes.
This is a story that starts a few years ago.
I’m an Information Designer and I believe that visualizing data can have a significant role in communicating contents and stories, because of its strong communicative potential. As a professional in this field I feel a responsibility to use this potential to open small windows from which to look at relevant topics from a different perspective.
This is why I started working on the project I’m going to talk about here. It’s a personal one and it is — without any doubts — the most emotionally intense project I’ve ever worked on.
The Stories Behind a Line
A few years ago, my boyfriend told me about a boy he had met some days before, an asylum seeker arrived from Somalia. His name is Abdullahi and he told my boyfriend about his journey from his hometown to Italy. After having listened to his story, I started thinking about how few I knew about these journeys, and about how Italian media tend to focus more on the Mediterranean Sea route.
But there are often thousands of kilometers before that part and hundreds of days spent traveling.
I immediately started to think about how I would have liked to use my professional competences to talk about these journeys, sharing personal data about them. I have to say that I’ve had very soon in mind the structure of this potential project, but I was intimidated by the strong painful component of these experiences.
I was afraid to be insensitive with the potential narrators asking information about their journeys and so I kept the project locked in my mind for a long time.
Months later I’ve met a volunteer who works in a welcoming center in my hometown and I told her about my idea.
She loved it, adding that she had already in mind a group of people who could have participated in the project.
This is how I met M.B., S.S., M.D., A.L., S.G. and T.K. — six asylum seekers arrived in Italy in 2016 — and this is how The Stories Behind a Line — a visual narrative of their journeys — started.
Giving a perceivable shape to a life experience
I’ve met them in 2016, they were hosted in a welcoming center in Vercelli, my hometown. My idea was to communicate their experiences showing the data that characterized them, to give a perceivable shape to their journeys.
During our meetings, I asked them about their traveling from their homeland to Italy and — with the help of Google Map — reconstructed their routes point by point.
For each point I asked them how many days they had travelled to get there, which was the transportation and how many days they stayed there before moving to the following place.
These data are very simple and easily understandable by everyone and I think — I hope— that the project can find in this simplicity its communicative strength. In addition, I’ve told them that I would have note down every additional memory, comment or note that they would have liked to add to their narrative.
Collecting personal painful data
This data collection process was obviously completely different from the ones I’m used to. I usually look for sources and datasets online, but this time I decided to exit from the digital world in which I am too immersed sometimes and to go out meeting and talking with the people who “live” the topic everyday.
And this was an incredibly precious experience, from an informative point of view and from a human point of view.
In this situation I honestly think that my perspective and my feelings during the process were irrelevant if compared to theirs.
But I’d like to share with you a few thoughts, because this data collection process itself was extremely relevant and I think it deserves to have its own space here.
Asking the six people to tell me, a stranger, about their experiences was not easy. Not because of them — all of them have been incredibly kind to me—but because I felt this overall sense of guilt in asking them about their painful memories.
But I honestly believed in this project and in the fact that data visualization can be not only a tool to communicate to people, but also to give a voice to people who don’t have platforms. This concept and their trust is what convinced me to keep on working on the project.
It is extremely important for me to say how grateful I am to them for having decided to share with me their stories. I will never forget the kindness, calm and strong rationality that characterized their narratives.
The quietness of such strong moments had a significant role in my design approach to the project. And — in general—in my life.
Simple personal data | vs | Complex global topic
Another aspect I was intimidated by was the fact that, considering the range of terrible experiences they’ve been through and the complexity of the topic, I was asking them very simple information.
But this is because I really wanted to provide a clean, rational and simple narrative of these stories. And this point for me is a focal one. I think that such a complex topic deserves rationality and also a simple clearness, to be communicated properly and — especially — understood.
And I think that sometimes the migration topic it’s subject to spectacularization by the media, a spectacularization that undermines a rational approach and a clear narrative.
This is why I decided to show very simple information: days spent traveling, kilometers and transportations. This data are part of everyone’s everyday life and easily understandable. And I think — and hope — that showing these simple and personal information — connected to such a complex and global topic — can provide a new point of view, a window from which to observe it.
Besides, the personal notes that they shared with me — only when they wanted to — allowed me to add a very meaningful informative and also emotional layer to the project.
Six personal lines
After our meetings I’ve started working on the visualizations.
I decided to draw for each person a line, a unique line shaped by the lived experiences. This unicity aspect was very important for me.
As I mentioned before, when I started this project I had already in mind its potential structure, but I let our meetings shape the project, that during the design phase has changed and evolved according to their stories.
And — again—also their quiet and rational approach to the reporting moments strongly influenced my design choices.
I visualized the days data as an horizontal line, to keep the element as simple as possible. The blue line represents the days spent in each city and the light blue one represents the days spent traveling.
As data visualization designer I love experimenting with visual models, but in this case I just wanted to provide a storytelling with shapes that could immediately understood by the readers.
I also represented the transportations, as different dotted lines.
The final project is a website, an interactive storytelling piece: storiesbehindaline.com. I’m not a programmer, so to create the website I collaborated with a super talented colleague and dear friend of mine, Alex Piacentini.
In the landing page you can see the six lines, with the initials of the six narrators. Each single story is precious and for this reason, I wanted to be sure to give the lines their own space, showing them at first as black paths on a white background.
This represents the experience lived by S., a 20 years old boy coming from Mali. He arrived in Italy almost 4 years after having left his hometown.
Clicking on data, you can see the day information and going over with the mouse it is possible to read the name of the places and the transportation data.
The red dots represent the moments in which the narrators decided to share some more detailed fragments from their stories, clicking on them allows to read them.
To give the lines context, it is then possible to reveal the maps under the lines.
In addition, I also worked on a second visual model, the Distances view, stretching the path to a vertical line and adding the travelled kilometers, in order to provide a clean, graphical version.
Here the blue line represents again the days of stay in the city and the rectangle shows the number of days spent traveling and the travelled kilometers.
No pictures
There are no pictures of the six people and there are two reasons for that. The less important one: I didn’t want to use them.
I know how photography can be powerful in documenting, I deeply admire photographer’s capacity of communicating stories.
But I didn’t think it was necessary for this specific project. In this case I really wanted the readers to focus on the information and the words, that are already so relevant.
We have so many visual inputs everyday and of course this can be such a good thing, because we have to know what’s happening around us, we can’t ignore it. But it’s not right in my opinion when it’s used to create sensationalism for situations that are already so dramatic.
For this project I wanted the readers to exit temporarily from this world full of images we’re used to and to enter directly in these stories, taking the time to them and trying to understand them in a clean and rational — yet emotionally intense — space.
But the second reason for not using pictures is the most important one: they didn’t want to.
They preferred to remain anonymous. Sharing personal data can be a very communicatively powerful expression, but it must be accompanied by a deep respect of other people privacy and wills.
Personal visual narratives to understand global topics
This project is a personal one, so when Alex and I decided that it was ready to be published, we put it online. I have to say that, I was very positively surprised by the reactions. Many people understood what I was trying to do, and I’m very happy of that.
This project represents only a small fragment of the migration topic, and it deals with it from a very specific point of view.
Of course it’s important to address such a global and complex issue, talking about big numbers and showing the overall picture to communicate it — again — rationally, allowing the readers to have a broad idea of what’s happening. Also to try not to let them trapped in the fears that too many political figures are exploiting.
But at the same time I think that also providing such small windows from which to look at the subject can help in having a deeper comprehension of it.
I think that combining the big picture to a very personal point of view can be a good way to deal with global issues without losing track of the humanity that stands behind them.
The migration topic is made by people, is lived by people so this is why I think that one of the ways in which it can be told and communicated can be giving directly to the people who are living it the possibility to share their experiences.
And — I’m repeating this word because for me it’s very important — I believe that this topic deserves a rational approach.
Rationality or/and empathy
At the same time, I don’t think that rationality necessarily implies lack of empathy. I think that empathy is a component that is dangerously missing lately.
As I’ve written, when I shared the project online many people commented and appreciated what I was trying to do.
Visual narratives as empathy generator
I would like to share with you a few comments (not to brag about them!) but to understand with you which elements of this project worked and how such a project can also generate empathy.
Some people appreciated the fact that at first you can only see a black line on a white background and that — in a second moment — you can see the map behind it. In some cases it generated surprise, because some of the readers weren’t expecting to see such long distances.
Many people were interested about the transportations. A.L., a seventeen years old boy coming from Guinea crossed part of the desert on feet and some people highlighted and shared that part of his journey.
I’ve been told that reading the numbers of the days spent traveling and looking at that long horizontal lines communicated the sense of exhaustion that characterized these journeys.
And then the narrators comments really moved many readers. A beautiful comment is the one shared by S.W.G., a 26 years old boy coming from Pakistan, who at the end of our meeting told me:
“My mind is quiet now. I’m quiet because I’m safe and that’s why I love Italy”.
And many readers were moved by the words of A.L.:
“You have a beautiful life here, because you know that you’re safe.”
The walls that block empathy
I was expecting to receive insults after having shared this project, because the online hatred is part of the digital world that surrounds us.
But I didn’t and I think this is not a merit of mine, but it’s because we live in digital bubbles, so the people who shared my project are sensitive to certain topics and maybe also their connections are and etcetera.
The project exited from this bubble when I had the opportunity to write an article on it for Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian newspaper.
And when Il Sole 24 Ore shared the article on Twitter I’ve read some of the comments I was expecting.
“Useless, no one wants them.”
“And all of 6 in Italy.”
“Six ways of invasion…”
“Italy can’t contain everyone.”
So what does this mean? That I wasn’t able to speak to those people.
Of course is not that simple and I’m not sure that they’ve actually opened the page, because the comments are just referring to the content of the tweet. But I though a lot about these comments, is there anything I can do about it? I don’t want to change anybody’s mind but I would love just to bring these people to think a little bit more on these stories and on the complexity of the topic they’re part of.
There are some huge walls that block empathy, but I cannot and I don’t want to judge people without knowing their stories and their problems. I’m just asking myself — and I don’t have an answer right now — if there is anything I could do to talk to them too.
Anyway, this project talked to many other people and also moved them, and for me it was very important to stress this positive aspect when I met again the narrators after the publication.
Data visualization to give voice to people
So what’s next? This project for me is a starting point, a declaration of intents.
I would like to keep on working on this concept of data visualization as tool not only to communicate to people, but also to give them a voice. So if you have any idea or if you know about a context in which this concept could be useful, please feel free to reach me. I’ll be happy to talk about it.
This project was a personal one, without any clients or commissions.
Alex and I worked on it during the evenings and the weekends, but we did it gladly, because working on such a project was almost becoming a necessity considering my job and the responsibility I was feeling to use it to give a small contribution.
And I really hope to have the opportunity to keep on working on similar projects starting from the same concepts.
Working on The Stories Behind a Line has been such an intense experience and I will never forget the meetings with the people who worked at it with me.
I don’t know if there is necessarily a right way to work on such a project, maybe my own way is not the best one. But I think that simply trying to work on projects like this one — keeping constantly in mind that there are human lives behind them—can be a good starting point.
Data visualization can be such a powerful tool and I’m deeply interested about the possibilities it opens. And, in particular, I love to use it for giving my contribute in trying to create something that can help someone. In discovering, understanding or having a voice.
How to conclude this piece?
I wasn’t sure of how I could conclude this article, because there are so many other things I could say about this experience, but maybe the best way to do it it’s simply thanking.
I want to thank Alfonsina Zanatta, referent of “Vercelli Festa dei Popoli”, who helped me to get in contact with CAS Migrantes.
I want to thank Alberto Fragapane, my brother, who helped me in the communication with the French speaking people.
Thank you to Alex Piacentini, who worked with me at the website and helped me to build up this project.
And to M.B., S.S., M.D., A.L., S.W.G. and T.K., thank you so much.
