Data and design are often seen as incompatible. Design is empathic, emotive, and artful. It is a craft that can not be fully rationalised, reduced to numbers, or planned in advance. Data, on the other hand, is rational and objective. It is a scientific endeavour that proceeds in a formulaic way toward certainty.
Having worked this last year designing with data, I have come to see these ways of thinking as deeply naive. This talk shares my journey in coming to see data as a tool that deepens—rather than diminishes—the fundamentally human nature of design.