How Tekken Reinvented My Data Visualization Design Process

Engaging the community around this fighting game challenged me to rethink my approach to creating data visualizations

It’s been a full year since I’ve become an independent data visualization designer. When I first started, projects that came to me didn’t relate to my interests or skills. Over the past eight months, it’s become very clear to me that when clients hire freelancers, they want either: dashboards, interactive visualizations, or reports. I didn’t care for any of these. It always surprises me when I get emails for this kind of work because my portfolio is far from what they look for. I specialize in static visualizations that aim to achieve two outcomes: data documentaries (like a film documentary, except it recounts events through data), and visualizing the world (integrating data into existing formats that don’t traditionally express data, like a food menu).

I considered quitting data visualization altogether in June 2020 and moving onto something else. I originally entered the field because I was inspired by creative work done by Giorgia Lupi, Nadieh Bremer…