Data Visualization As an Act of Witnessing
The Undocumented Migration Project pop-up installation, “Hostile Terrain,” visualizes the humanitarian crisis on the United States’ southern border
In late 2016, I read an article by Michael Brennan, principal of Detroit-based, nonprofit design firm Civilla, in the Harvard Business Review. I was haunted by this line:
“I cannot recollect, in 30 years of work, a single PowerPoint presentation I saw or gave that altered the course of anything.”
I am a qualitative researcher and strategist. It is my job to talk to people. Over the years, I’ve spoken with all types of people: school cafeteria workers to women who lost pregnancies late in their terms. When this exploration goes well, what happens is termed “developing empathy.” In other words, I get a tiny sense of what it’s like to walk in another person’s shoes. The challenge is what happens next. I have to transmit that new understanding to the rest of the project team, most of whom have not been as “in the weeds” with the participants. We call this “socializing the research insights,” and no matter how integrated and cross-functional the project team, somewhere along the way, in order to achieve alignment or obtain buy-in, other people will need to be persuaded, but the…
