David Roedl

Being a designer of information technologies with a strong concern for social issues, this question often pervades my thinking: can the simple dissemination of information instigate cultural change?

For me personally at least, key encounters with information seem to have drastically altered my path in life. My interest in sustainability, for example, I can almost completely attribute to three simple graphs that were shown to me by Prof. David Haberman in the spring of 2005.

The first one represented global population. It looked something like this:

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The second one I believe represented resource consumption per capita. The shape was very similar to the first.

The third one (and this one was the kicker) represented species loss. It looked a bit like this:

Like Galileo’s sun spot maps, the three graphs taken together formed a ‘visible proof’ about the world. It was a moment of what Edward Tufte might call ‘beautiful evidence’. The inference was simple to make: unrestrained growth is destroying life on earth. This bit of knowledge, which could be illustrated through a few statistics, was something that I had been completely ignorant about. Once I encountered it, however, my whole way of seeing, thinking, and acting were changed. It is moments like these that inspire me as a designer.

Of course, information, data or statistics alone do not inevitably evoke such a response. The design of the encounter is of as much importance. Visual presentation must be clearly and intelligently designed to communicate effectively. Tufte’s books contain a wealth of insight on how to do this (see especially the principles of analytic design found in Beautiful Evidence). When it comes to designing interactive technologies, I think the possibilities and challenges both are multiplied. Gapminder’s compelling interface to world development data demonstrates some of rich possibilities afforded by interactivity.

However, even if design succeeds in communicating some cognitive knowledge, this does not mean that it will have any lasting effect on a person…