20 Images that Defined Outlier 2024: From Vernacular Design to AI-Driven Shifts 📸
“In order to break the rules, you must first know the rules,” expressed Nick Desbarats, setting the tone for the 3-day event in Chicago centered around positive disruptions.
Joining over 400 mission-driven professionals, and finally meeting Data Visualization Society board members in person was a highlight! This year’s #Outlier2024 featured talks from NASA, Urban Institute, McLaren Racing, and UNICEF, offering a well-rounded knowledge base.
Key Takeaways:
1. Integration Across Industries 🤝
Data visualisation is now more integrated across sectors and roles, enhancing strategic problem-solving and user-centered design. Whether encouraging healthy eating or helping a racing driver shave off milliseconds (thanks Michael G.), the need to consider audience, context, and feedback loops is critical. As tech evolves, it allows us to break the rules—but we need deep domain experts to know what can be broken and what should be preserved.
Highlights:
• Regine Abos: Habitual framework and vernacular design.
• Kevin Ford: Emphasizing business problem-solving over dashboards.
• Aleszu Bajak: The importance of ‘exquisite documentation’.
2. Technological Shifts 🤖
The shift towards low-code/no-code/automated solutions is making lighter work, and in turn enabling us to be more inventive and creative. This allows for rapid production of engaging data-driven tools, stories and experiences from sometimes complex data sets.
Highlights:
•Matthias Stahl & Rudi O'Reilly Meehan: Demonstrated the power of Svelte kit and GSAP library animations.
• Valentina D'Efilippo: Efficient vectorizing with Adobe Fresco for Britannica’s Encyclopedia Infographica.
• Nick Desbarats: Not tech per se, but how might domain experts feed AI solutions to make automated data led content more accessible, e.g. imagine a tool presetting chart tricks such as 1. Chart annotations, 2. Bait & switch charts 3. Slow reveals.
3. Community and Responsibility 🫶
The data community shares the responsibility to uphold values and best practices. Ethical considerations in AI and data usage are crucial to ensure our visualizations remain ethical, unbiased and inclusive. Leveraging community spirit and networks to safeguard trust and set standards is essential.
Highlights:
• Eli Holder & Gabrielle Merite: How to Undermine Humanity with Data Viz.
• Emilia Ruzicka: Tactics for Gender Inclusivity in Data Reporting. Admired the UX quote:“When in doubt, write it out”.
• infogr8’s FutureFridays with Martina Zunica & Eli Holder: Practical session navigating the ethics and power of visualization.
Kudos to Sam Hart for the lighthearted “This is not Havana Cuba” poster map story, reminding us to question what we see. Thank you, Sam, for bringing a unanimous chuckle to the conference— perhaps meme posters will become a part of the next wave in our data visualisation frontier. 😊
See you all in Miami 2025!
