Hot new data set? Breaking current events? Impactful story to tell? Maybe it’s as simple as a Makeover Monday dataset that we do on autopilot… whatever the data, we should work to not fail the soul of the data. Josh has written about it, and so has Bridget… countless others as well… and now, I am too.
Every data point is a story… and sometimes those data points are personal… a tale of human suffering, the loss of life, the spread of disease, the violence enacted upon others.
Some are as innocuous as the purchase of a particular iPhone, others are as tragic as an abused child. Either way, we (author included) need to remember to take the time, consider the audience, and pay tribute to the data… and in the most sensitive, tragic or life effecting cases, offer a warning.
In each of our lives we will experience pain, but each experience is different. We can’t control who sees our data visualizations when we share them publicly, so we have to guard against causing psychological harm.
Back in January of 2001 I had a friend murdered in Oakland. He was stabbed by a criminal pretending to be homeless. He asked for some change, my friend had none to give, so this man dragged him in an alley, lifted him off the ground and stabbed him in the chest. Fast forward 3 months and I find myself in Ann Arbor, Michigan at a concert. After the concert, I stepped out on the street and a homeless man approached me and asked for change. Needless to say, I did not expect my reaction, not did he. He didn’t know my story, and didn’t intend to cause me psychological pain, but he did.
Now, imagine your viz in COVID-19 is seen by someone who’s just lost a friend, or family member. Maybe they didn’t lose someone at all, but they were quarantined on a cruise ship with no way out. What will their reaction be?
So how do we treat these data souls with the reverence we need to show? He’s a quick and easy step-by-step.