Positive Numbers: Data, Journalism, Science, and Research, with Beyond Words

Rebecca Conroy, co-founder at Beyond Words, on how data can tackle major world issues

Rebecca Conroy from Beyond Words speaking at Encode 2019, London.

This article is an excerpt from the Encode 2019 Festival Guide, and it’s part of our ‘Encode Hacks’ series that celebrates some of the stunning speakers and contributors who were part of our latest event.

The team at Beyond Words firmly believes in the power of truthful data and its capacity to change the world. At Encode 2019, Rebecca Conroy, founding partner of Beyond Words, illustrated how data can be used to help tackle some of the major issues facing the world today, including climate crisis, global health, pollution, human rights.

We interviewed Rebecca about how Beyond Words uses data to address these issues.

We’re at a crossroads in time, where some people are choosing to ignore the data that tells us about the state of the planet and our society.

Can you provide a practice-hack that you’ve gleaned from your personal experience working in dataviz design?

You can’t design what you don’t understand. You have to invest time in reading, exploring, and really getting under the skin of the data and the subject you’re being asked to visualise. This is how we work: we start by writing a creative vision that sets out what this data-driven story needs to reveal. Our researchers and analysts then examine, explore, curate, and edit the data. This helps us to refine and shape the narrative, followed by sketches to inform the designs.

‘Cascade’: created for the Neglected Tropical Diseases Summit in 2017 (image courtesy of Beyond Words).

How are you currently using data in your design practice and how would you like to use it in the future?

We’re using it for good — we decided when we started the studio this would be one of our primary goals. We don’t shy away from telling the truth, especially now, while we’re at a critical stage that is seeing journalism, science, and data being attacked from different directions. We have an opportunity and an obligation to make sure the real story behind the data we are representing is being told.

We’re firm believers in the power of truthful data to change the world.

What can we do as practitioners to ensure that lessons and experiences within our field are shared and embedded within education frameworks?

We should give our time freely to educational institutions to make sure students are learning crucial best practices as early as possible in their education. Our practice already has an official position with the University of the Arts London (UAL) and the London College of Communication, (our Creative Partner is UAL’s Visiting Fellow for Data Visualisation), and we have worked internationally with other institutions to share our process.

We also tend to share our learnings by writing extensive case studies on our most significant projects, such as ‘Cascade’ and ‘This is Ella’.

‘This is Ella’: a project showing the harm air pollution has on children (image courtesy of Beyond Words).

Who is Beyond Words?

Rebecca is co-founder and managing partner at data visualization studio Beyond Words. A journalist by background, Rebecca started her career in BBC Radio and went on to launch and run a range of the BBC’s websites before starting the studio.