Building connections with data!

ID: Social/Network of support

As I embarked on my Tableau learning journey, I also learned more about myself. My experience in creating data visualisation has been immensely enriching and led to useful internal reflections and self-discovery. Here’s a story about my first collaboration with another data analyst.

The amazing Nicole Klassen, the #VizCollab founder, put me in touch with another data analyst from Russia. According to Nicole, the data analyst was interested in creating a data viz with me on a specific human rights issue.

I was just super excited that someone wanted to collaborate with me on a data viz project!

This post is about the collaboration process and a friendship that was formed from the collaboration. Due to the recent situation with Ukraine and Russia, my collaborator wished to remain anonymous. I will from now onward, refer to her as “The Analyst”.

Getting to know each other

The Analyst and I did not know each other before we collaborated. There was a moment when they messaged me on Twitter about one of my vizzes and that was it. So, we kicked off our collaboration by getting to know each other: our professional background, our passion, strengths, areas we want to improve in data visualisation as well as our expectations from the collaboration.

Selection of topic

The Analyst proposed 2 potential human rights-related topics for us to visualize:

Presenting the work of some major international human rights organisations, OR Presenting a human rights dataset of a specific country or event.

During this exchange, the Analyst mentioned Memorial’s work. Memorial is a prominent award-winning human rights organisation based in Russia. I was immediately drawn to the idea of visualising Memorial’s work and history despite not knowing much about Memorial. But this only means that I can learn more about the organisation through this collaboration!

Setting the objectives and framework for the data viz

As a human rights advocate, I dealt with a lot of information or reports that exposed gross human rights abuses and violations. So, the Analyst and I decided that instead of focusing on Memorial’s struggle and challenges doing their work (which is still important to recognise), we wanted our viz to also showcase how influential and empowering Memorial’s work is. Despite the reprisals faced, Memorial pioneered and accomplished a lot of landmark victories in the human rights movement. To us, these success stories need to be told and highlighted more. We want to inject more hope into our data visualisation!

Gathering the data

There are no existing datasets for us to use for the visualisation so we started from scratch. After compiling all the potential information that we could use for the visualisation, we noticed that:

The data gathered are mostly in Russian so the Analyst had to translate them to enable me to read and help review the collected data. The Analyst would dilligently translate and transfer the data onto an Excel sheet and we would review and clarify our understanding of the data together. This took us around 6 weeks to accomplish (Jan 20-Mar 3).

The data are also mostly qualitative. So we organised the data and constructed a category system to classify the data better. The reading and coding process took some time because we also had parallel discussions about which data to include and exclude based on the objectives we set for the visualisation. This was where the Analyst shone and led the process for us.

Conceptualizing the viz’s design

This was, of course, my favourite part of vizzing. The Analyst was more than happy to let me lead on this but I wanted this process to be as collaborative as possible! This was how we shared the task on this front:

The Analyst proposed charts that we can use in the viz as well as finding the resources or tips on how to build them. The viz was done on my Tableau Public account to prevent any risks of reprisals against the Analyst.

I proposed the concept and visual representations and design that could be used for our viz. We were inspired by Russian cultural references that both the Analyst and I brought to the table (or rather Gmail).

Disseminating the viz and impact

When we were almost done with the visualisation, Russia invaded Ukraine. The Analyst had to withdraw from the collaboration and focus on more pressing priorities. I continued finalising the viz. After discussing with the Analyst, we agreed to go ahead and publish the viz on Tableau Public. It is our small way of supporting and giving more visibility to the work of human rights organisations in the country.

A few months ago, the Communication Manager of Memorial contacted us with the intention of featuring our data viz on their social media and newsletter. We were grateful to have our viz shared and used to convey positive messages about the important work that human rights defenders such as the Memorial are doing.

Lessons learned

• The collaboration provided me with a first-hand opportunity to learn more about the human rights context in Russia and the amazing work that Memorial did.
• It also made me rethink measures and ways to ensure that collaborating or creating data visualisation on difficult topics such as this may not cause reprisals or risk to others in the process. Similar to my present work, confidentiality and anonymity could help protect identities and ensure the safety of others working on such delicate human rights subjects.
• Respecting the data and stories gathered are essential in the collaboration especially since I didn’t know much about the actual context and situation of Memorial’s work. I asked a lot of questions to the Analyst and did some additional reading on my own as well to build my understanding.
• Communication was key and we tried our best at it despite only having email as our means of interaction. Communication was also important as most of the data were translated from Russian to English. We dedicated a lot of time to discussing and agreeing on how we understood the dataset before we proceed.

I gained more respect for Memorial’s and the Analyst’s perseverance in staying true to what they stand for and how data could showcase that effectively. Check out our work on Tableau Public and can’t wait to collaborate with other Tableau authors, soon!