From words to wonder: two important faces of Scientific communication
The affection our team has for the project “The obesity epidemic and non-communicable diseases” is an example of what we believe Odd can do best. Multidisciplinarity aside (the project explored topics in science, politics, design and technology), we dove into the co-creation process with a collaborative and extremely specialized team — that still believes science can change Brazil, despite its complex political issues.
At Odd.Studio we work in the intersection between science, design and technology. It’s not just something we say: though small, our team is made of 25% Doctorates in Science, 50% information/data scientists and 62,5% designers.
One of our motivations is to support scientists and researchers when it comes to science outreach: how can they communicate their work beyond the academic? How can science engage journalists, public stakeholders, politicians, decision makers and the general public?
We believe science can and should burst the academic bubble to guide more evidence-based public policies.
We also believe that responsibly communicating data is not a professional trait that comes from the imperative courage of telling stories. Instead, it may come from respecting the object of study — from the fear of being insensitive with our target audience. Fear doesn’t have to stop you, but serve as a signal, as motive to tend to what actually matters. Being afraid of mistakes can make us study, question and research.
“The obesity epidemic and non-communicable diseases” project allowed us to explore some of our best-known abilities, but also challenged us to an immersion in a delicate matter seen through the prisms of design, communication and science. And, of course, it was an opportunity to take to the limit our pleasure to learn by doing — since it was a given from the start that we would try to do something we didn’t know how to (yet).
Creating stories from scientific articles
Writing a scientific article is complicated. Almost ten years have passed since I published my first paper — and I still wonder if I didn’t make any mistakes or if it had any imprecisions. It is a process that demands huge objectivity (it’s not unusual to see 100-page thesis synthetized into six pages), great comprehension of the project and its results (usually translating the work of an entire team) and an equally broad and current knowledge of the area and the related topics researched all around the world.
It is a process that includes writing, proofreading, rewriting, submission, rewriting… Sometimes along the way there’s feedback that makes the researcher rethink methodology and results — after that, there’s more proofreading and, ultimately, a final version in which the author will inevitably find a mistake that somehow survived this entire process. The average time between the submission and the acceptance of an article is approximately a hundred days, depending on the area of research. Before that, of course, there’s the whole writing process.
It is an immersive path both in its research and in the canonical way academics write them. The formal writing — introduction, motivation, methodology, results and discussion (which may also vary according to the area) — facilitates peer reviews, where peer specialists in the area can anonymously and mercilessly critique the article to ensure bulletproof publication, and the reproducibility of the knowledge generated.
Scientific articles are not only the main media to communicate results among the science community — but the total of publications and the relevance of such publications is a performance evaluation metric for researchers. It’s easy to understand why researchers and scientists tend to be so familiar with this specific narrative structure, even though it’s far from being attractive to other audiences.
And if we are being honest, the number of people who read scientific articles by their own will is close to zero. Most of the Science content we read nowadays has been digested from its source, trying to simplify its results, rarely considering the original researcher in doing so. This creates a distance between the scientific knowledge and its translation, or the scientists and the general public, ultimately generating uncertainty and suspicion towards “real science”.
That is why we believe scientists and researchers should be protagonists in translating their own research — but they shouldn’t carry by themselves the additional responsibilities that come along with communicating science to non-academic audiences.
It is easier said than done, but not impossible! I can prove it and leave you with a list of helpful tips (by the very end of this article, for those of you too lazy to read the coolest-story-ever I’m about to tell).
“The obesity epidemic and non-communicable diseases (NCD)” project, conducted by Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) professor Leandro Rezende, was exactly at this point: he had a scientific article ready to publish, but his project also included the communication of research findings to non-academic audiences — mainly to public stakeholders that could change policies.
We had two main questions to answer:
(1) How can we support the research team in communicating its findings to a broader audience?
(2)How can we do that by translating the project’s intention — not shaming the individual with obesity, but proposing a systemic solution to the NCD epidemic.
Asking difficult questions
There’s no doubt that the researcher is the top specialist in the researched topic. Sounds redundant? Yeah, sure — but most people forget that an article is only the tip of an iceberg of knowledge on the subject. That’s why the work of co-creating a story begins when our team asks a round of difficult questions: the ones which have sensible answers with the most delicate content.
This round of questions allows our team to have a better understanding of the research, but it also creates a collective narrative in which everyone can identify inconsistencies and gaps in the story that require more details. It may result in the discovery of an untold protagonist — or, instead, of an untold villain, as was the case of the ultra-processed food.
Another delicate decision is the balance between composing a story serving exclusively to answer the research question, and writing a story using some research results to support a bigger picture. The most efficient result lies somewhere between the two options: it values the research work, while delivering a broader context of the situation.
This alternative will demand from the researcher the conscience of a different reality: for most non-academic audiences, context is more important than results, and methodology is irrelevant.
For us, the result of this stage was telling a five-chapter story in scrollytelling: a site in which the story flows through scrolling the screen and in which the reader can interact with the content by selecting filters and exploring visualizations. We dedicated a single chapter to the results of the research, highlighted with exploratory visualizations. The rest was dedicated to contextualize the theme both worldwide and regionally, presenting the main questions that inspired the study and how they oriented objectives and, finally, sociocultural impact expectations.
It was a stage that also made clear how sensitive the subject we were communicating really was. A bad choice of words could make our reader understand the problems related to NCD treatment costs in the Brazilian Unified Health System as a responsibility of the individual with obesity — the opposite of what we intended with the project. Such care — not only with words, but with the visual elements chosen — was present throughout the journey.
Respecting who is impacted by the subject
We believe that one of Odd’s missions is to bring a user-focused perspective to research — something the area of design has worked with for years.
While the users of scientific articles are mostly scientists (interested in methodology and results, and probably knowledgeable about the obesity epidemic context), the intended user for the story we were creating could be clueless on the topic — or, something even harder to address, someone with prejudice on obesity.
There are lots of examples of the distorted visions society and public stakeholders have when it comes to individualizing the cause and responsibility for diseases: smoking, HIV, vaccination are just a few of them. In many of these cases, the concept of personal choice is used to cover the fact that there is no choice when public policies don’t ensure options and access to knowledge for individuals.
That was one of the coolest aspects in the co-creation process. Even though the social context wasn’t actually present in the article, our conversations with professor Leandro were incredible lectures on how structural fatphobia works. We learned that Brazil is a worldwide reference in research when it comes to food classification, a hugely important approach in order to understand the obesity epidemic, and that changes in public policy should offer citizens better conditions when it comes to health — and to eating per se. Remember I said researchers are the greatest specialists in their research topic?
From our side, we tried to ensure the final product made justice to such preoccupations. An example of that was the (difficult) change of the title: from the original “The cost of obesity” (fair and square for an article) to “The obesity epidemic and NCD: causes, costs and the Unified Health System (SUS) overcharge”, not focusing attention on results as much, and indicating that obesity, individually, cannot be directly defined as a problem. Instead, we assertively expressed that obesity’s epidemic behavior is the portrait of a change of habit in society, that can cause NCD cases to rise — and the healthcare costs for treating such conditions.
Design with meaning
The main concept in our story was the difference between individual causes and behaviors (genetic factors, medications) and collective causes and behaviors (eating habits, exercise). An epidemic cannot be explained nor prevented by attacking individual causes, and at the same time an individual cannot be properly treated carrying guilt and responsibility for collective causes.
Such concepts — collective, individual — were used in creating a set of icons representing individuals by themselves, and groups of individuals. Always keeping in mind that even the collective is made of individuals, we were able to indicate through visual elements when sociocultural effects are dominating and when individual choices are more important.
The use of semigeometric figures, conceptualized and designed by Anita Sifuentes, brought unique traits to the characters, differentiating them from traditional and online iconography — both bound to be considered insensitive or even prejudicious to the subject. The use of such figurative elements was essential to summarize the content, offering a pleasant and interactive reading experience and directing the readers’ attention to the fundamental concepts required to comprehend the problem.
Finally, visualizations were planned in order to respect the ranking format of the article’s analysis, illustrating mostly in a comparative way the diseases that kill the most and that cost the most in Brazil. They also allow the user to explore available results in detail.
Creating what we didn’t know (yet)
Innovation in data products occur when we first define users and goals and only then think about how to reach such goals with the technological limitations we have.
As we went deeper into the problem that the project tried to explain and into the user it wanted to communicate with, scrollytelling seemed the best data product choice, even though the project developer had never made one (at least not with the insane amount of animated elements I insisted on having). It became an inside joke — when I asked if something was “doable”, Matheus Alves always gave me one of five answers:
a. Yes, it can be easily done;
b. I’ve done something similar;
c. It could be done, I guess, but I need to find out how;
d. Can be done, but not with this deadline;
e. Sure, but it’ll screw up the website.
Among the possible answers, we were only limited by e — everything else we negotiated and expanded deadlines when we believed in something.
The result was a product that delivered satisfaction both to the researcher and to his team. One that gives us great pride, turning into frequently mentioned case of how wonder can be brought to scientific research.
Lessons learned
If you also want to make charming story from an article or technical text, here are some of the lessons we learned from this project that we think might help:
- The greatest experts are the researchers and authors of the article: consider them not just customers, but your project partners;
- Communicating science requires multidisciplinarity. Search for team members that have different background and knowledge than yours;
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions that are difficult or that seem basic. Your client will probably surprise you with the answers — use the benefit of being new to the project to your advantage;
- Always keep in mind the sensitivity of the subject, both for person reading it and for the one who is represented at the center of your design and story;
- Choose the data product that will best support you in achieving your objective (whether it is digital or physical), not what you are comfortable doing.
Our very special thanks to professor Leandro Rezende and his team, not only for coming to us with this project, but also for trusting our propositions and for answering so passionately to our doubts. Creating with you was a pleasure.
The stories we tell are from our own experience and beliefs as individuals and as a company. They do not represent the opinion of our clients or partners. As we come from different backgrounds and countries, we research and fact-check our work to the best of our abilities and in many languages. Should you spot mistakes, inaccuracies or have any questions, please let us know at hello@odd.group. We will be more than happy to reply!
