RECOMMENDED: Greetings From. . . A Workshop to Visualise Unexpected Stories of a Place Through Data Postcards

Recently published in the Journal of Visualization and Interaction, Sofia Cretaio and Chiara L. Remondino (both at Polytechnic of Turin, Italy), have authored their peer-reviewed article, “Greetings From. . . A Workshop to Visualise Unexpected Stories of a Place Through Data Postcards,” which addresses their workshop, “Greetings from Naples,” and their exploratory workshop format developed at the Innovation Design Lab in Turin that uses data visualization as a tool for critically examining urban spaces, and their realities, sounds, scents, and rhythms. Drawing on Systemic Innovation Design Methodology, the format guides participants through a process of data collection, mapping, and visualization to produce a collective Databook of a given territory.

In particular, Cretaio and Remondino share how the communicative and emotional value of data visualizations. The piece presents a case study from a three-day workshop in Naples’ Quartieri Spagnoli neighborhood, where students from diverse backgrounds gathered and visualized local data using postcards as their medium. The resulting collection offers a multivocal portrait of place and demonstrates the format’s potential as a replicable model for urban research and community-centered design. Their data pedagogy included goals for participants to: “learn visual synthesis of data visualization to convey a meaningful message; explore the diversity of data visualization and data language, and how its use can highlight otherwise undetectable connections and insights; create a method and starting point for the design process to define needs and potentialities of a chosen context; and to enhancing the multidisciplinary approach to frame the context of analysis and its dynamics in an entirely and objective manner.”

This work will be of interest to digital humanities library professionals interested in the intersections of embodied data visualization and data literacy, along with the #dhmakes movement. The authors have made their materials freely available on OSF, including workshop materials to iterate it in your local setting, as well as images of the participants’ resulting postcards.