The Labourious Joy of Small Data
I didn’t have high expectations when I started working for Kantar in the summer of 2017. It’s common to hear that big organizations don’t care about their employees or that people don’t enjoy working there. But to my surprise, I learned that was not the case. One of the first things I noticed was how people interacted with each other. The mundane day-to-day interaction defined the work culture and I saw people throwing jokes at each other, sometimes people were tossing candy around, and I would occasionally hear roars of laughter that would spread out and infect those nearby. Company culture that is as positive as this one is not spontaneous. It is highly dependent top-down in which there must be firm belief in morale, respect, and ethics from upper management before it trickles down to the individual employees. I wanted to capture my discovery of this company’s positive culture. So I decided for 3 months, I would count the number of times I hear laughter in the office.
I had many challenges with this project. The first was that this whole process was intense in labour. It involved manual data collection and also manual design. The second challenge was trying to figure out how I could let my imagination run a bit more ‘wild’ and let my unconscious take reign. I might have been a bit more ‘wild’ in my creativity in the past, but I wanted to be ‘wild’ ’intentionally this time. I will go through both challenges in more depth below. You can see the full visualization here.
Keeping Things Small
At Kantar, I work with ‘small’ data, which I think means data that humans can process and understand just by looking at the numbers and not needing to look at the shape of the data. “Big” data on the other hand is not possible to map out by humans, it would just take too long. It requires assistance from automated programs to organize and visualize. Small data makes sense for the business we are in at Kantar. We usually need to understand small segments of people and a lot of value in our work is being able to go really deep into the data and help go through the nuances to provide businesses with actionable insights. In the same way Kantar provides these deep and meaningful insights, I believe data visualization has this potential in a broader sense. In the design research community, small data informs important design choices. People engage in ethnography, focus groups, and observe really small samples of people. This is the best way to ensure specialized products and services are created to solve their unique issues. This is regularly practiced by IDEO and IBM.
Hands-On
As a result of working with small data at Kantar, the tools I deploy aren’t Python, R, D3, or Tableau, but instead are Powerpoint and Excel. This might sound tedious and sad to all the data viz practitioners, but in fact, I think this is ideal for where my strengths lie. I buckled down and spent 6 months to learn D3. I decided to learn it because I saw so many other doing so and gaining tremendous success by achieving fluency in the programming language. The decision for me to stop learning was not a easy one. I learned that I really missed the feeling of using my hands to lay out each and every single shape. There is something about using our hands and the manual process to bring shape to data that I really love. I enjoy the process of using Illustrator to create each line, dot, and circle. I enjoy colouring in all the shapes and just putting everything together. I love fiddling with the axis, or legends and worry about the details. I feel very much in the process and in the moment, this was one of the main reasons why I wanted to pursue this career path.
This project I did on laughter was manual in its entire process. I was stressed out and I was anxious about it, but I was really in the flow with this one. The image below is a scale I built for all the circles in Illustrator. The area of the circle determine the number of laughs. So I had to base this on the diameter length. I placed each circle on this scale to determine its size.
Letting the Creativity Run Wild
My formal education was around two things, studying content and framework. By content, I mean sciences. I spent four years studying sciences, taking courses in physics, math, biology, chemistry, psychology, kinesiology, and astronomy. I then went on to study design strategy, which is framework. It is a means to deliver content. Film, art, photography, design, all of these are frameworks that distribute stories. Throughout my education in both science and design, I was always taught to rationalize. Every choice had to have a reason. Why did I decide to include this step in the experiment? Why did I decide to use this colour as part of the brand identity? Everything needed proof and reason, with no space to waste for anything else. But sometimes, I think it’s important to ignore all those rules and just let go.
One of the things I have previously heard from colleagues about design is how ‘safe’ it is. What I mean by this is that the work created does not provoke or engage, it follows the rules and it looks like something you have seen before. There is nothing wrong with this, ‘safe’ does have its place. But that does not mean it should become the norm. I think the only way for me to create work out of the norm and ‘wild’ is to not be safe in my design choices. Haruki Murakami, a celebrated writer, has noted how he taps into his inner creativity to write his captivating novels:
“It’s a dark, cool, quiet place. A basement in your soul. And that place can sometimes be dangerous to the human mind. I can open the door and enter that darkness, but I have to be very careful. I can find my story there. Then I bring that thing to the surface, into the real world.”
I follow Antoni Tudisco on Instagram, his work lies in the realm of motion graphics. I remember seeing it and feeling so weirded out by it. But I was captivated. There is no denying that no matter how strange Antoni’s work was, he has immense talent. When I see work from people who make things that are strange or out-of-this-world, I am filled with envy- I am envious of their ability to just let go and just be. I think to truly be creative at something, one must let go of reason and reality. I mean, come on, how does one think about dancing noodles?
Everything about Tudisco’s work is the opposite of safe, it challenges the status quo and I believe this is why he is so successful in what he does. In my opinion, he is doing what Murakami describes as going to the ‘basement in your soul’. Tudisco is capable of creating this work because he does not subscribe to prescribed trends or rules, he is looking inwards and expressing his true self. Education has taught me to be rational in all that I do and I think there is value for this, especially for work that is client-based and you need to show how you are making the clients’ money count. But sometimes, I find that this rationalization limits what is possible, and that is something I never want to confined by. Not as a person, not as a creative.
I attempted to remove rationalization by randomly orienting the circles. There is no reason for the direction they are pointing it. It just is. This makes it look a lot more fun and more interesting.
I Love Data Visualization
All the things I talked about above were thoughts that were triggered because of this project. I am constantly thinking about how I can improve; about how I can share this work with others and how it brings a smile to their face; about how I can keep the drive going to create more work; and what my next project will be. I love how this will never get old and I will never get bored. I am looking forward to the next project. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!
