Here’s an oldie but goodie from a presentation I gave at at a local show and tell event. My focus was sharing a piece of our process for how we made staffing data actionable for nurse managers. It was entitled Goals vs Reality (vs Reality) to frame the idea that while I would be talking about how we made quantitative data meaningful, it still doesn’t often explain the “why?” and that was an area we were working on as well.

It’s true, people change. It’s also true that people don’t change. You’re always who you are, but who are you? If activities and actions can have an affect on you and cause you to react, do they change who you are? Are you truly like Schrodinger’s cat, never known until an action is taken?

We humans get easily overwhelmed by complexity. To manage this, we’ve learned to navigate the world by treating its complexities as a system of discrete channels; slicing them into more manageable pieces. Consider each of our senses as the most primal example: we do not have a single sense with which to engage the world in its entirety, instead we have a multitude—one to address each slice or channel. When taken in tandem, our senses create a cohesive picture of the world, in our minds, that is larger than the sum of its parts.

I first had the idea while working on my Master’s design thesis, because it wasn’t actually my thesis, but ours. We had the opportunity to work in pairs on one thesis and, having just studied all about co-creation, collaboration and all that fun, creative stuff, it felt appropriate.

Storytelling is emotional and has the power to connects people on a distinctly human level. I’m often reminded of what an Executive Director once told me when being interviewed about her organizations processes: “Everything begins with a relationship.” That is a powerful statement and one that really validates the need for businesses to connect with their audiences.

As designers, we hear about the power and importance of empathy. The importance of sharing in a customer’s experience is an oft-discussed aspect of experience design. But before empathy can take place, we must have awareness. The ability to consciously perceive:

Visualizing data is a fantastic method for both uncovering the foundational insights that inform the story as well as telling the story itself, and it is a technique that is close to my heart. As such, it was the obvious choice for our weekly department rendezvous focusing on professional development and sharing.