Enhancing Data Narratives.Prototype of "Accurat: Data Home" case study

Nowadays we are witnessing an exponential rise in the generation, gathering and exchange of data in a broad range of domains: from commerce, education, health, to culture and society. The display of this huge quantity of information is now, more than ever, of great social relevance: data visualization has a great potential in uncovering substantial behaviors and aspects of data, but also in unraveling novel forms of communication, engagement and interactivity. With the advance of theoretical models and tools for handling information, data visualization has developed original languages, and still enormous prospects are opening, thanks to the contamination between different disciplines. One of the key challenges of data visualization design is to discover ways of addressing the broadness and multiplicity of interpretations of complex phenomena, providing through new visual means a non simplistic eye on the relational dynamics of data. An important aspect to consider in approaching such tasks is that data is a human artifact, and as such it is not impartial, but it is representative of people’s culture and behaviors. In the exploration of innovative visualization practices, the creation of dynamic and multimodal systems may offer interesting avenues, providing alternative forms of engagement and informativeness, through the combination of different media. In this work, some exploration of this direction is described through the case study "Accurat:Data-Home", a data-driven installation prototyped in collaboration with the data visualization design firm Accurat. Combining a humanistic concept of data and a multimodal approach to the visualization design, the installation addresses the narration of the evolution, life and values of Accurat. In the first part, the concepts of data and its visualization are presented, alongside with an introduction on emerging trends in the field considered relevant to this work. Following an outline of the main principles and methodologies of data visualization, the design and development process of the projects is reported. The described project is therefore presented as a demonstration on the benefits of multimodal interaction in telling rich data stories.