Hello

Francesca Morini

Each person living in Berlin consumes approximately 150 litres of water per day. This includes personal consumption, which amounts to the 75% of the total usage, and industrial consumption, which accounts for the other 25%. Berlin’s drinking water doesn’t come from lakes, of course, but from the ground. Essentially, groundwater is replenished through rain. However, the Berlin water system can be described as a partially closed water cycle, since wastewater gets treated and partially reused to augment available groundwater.

These are the conceptual premises behind the "Wie Viel Wasser?" project. Using the metaphor of surface water, we decided to compare the daily water consumption of Berliners with the capacity of individual lakes in the region. Why? Because Berliners love their lakes, but also because by imagining water as a finite resource its fragility becomes painfully visible.

![](/uploads/wie-viel-wasser-example-screen.png)

The user can search from a variety of lakes, upon selection the 3D model of their favourite model will pop up: if blue the water capacity is bigger than Berlin's water consumption, if red the lake would be depleted in less than one day.

The underlying data have been crunched using python, scaled using D3.js and rendered through Three.js. The geometries used as a base are real geographical features, scraped using the OSM API. 

![](/uploads/wie-viel-wasser-collage.png)

The app is optimized for mobile. The main visualization is always at the centre of the screen and additional information can be toggled exclusively by clicking on the bottom of the screen. Each lake has its own unique URL and can be shared with others.

This visualization looks at water as a finite resource, by showing our daily consumption in comparison with the popular lakes of Berlin and Brandenburg.

Wie viel wasser?

How can we measure Germany climate protection level? In this cooperation with taz, we investigated to which extents Germany’s pledges to implement climate protection strategies are followed by concrete regional development. We selected five different indicators for climate protection: mobility, waste, energy, buildings, and agriculture.  We located, analysed, and visualised relevant data for each of these indicators at a regional level.

![The image shows two physical postcards compared, one for Germany and one for Potsdam. The visualization shows data for the mobility sector, specifically the number of cars per inhabitants for the two areas.](/uploads/dsc0291-2048x1365.jpg "The physical postcards")

### Multi-channel and highly customizable

We designed and produced both physical and digital postcards containing visualizations covering all five indicators. The postcards exist for each of the 401 districts and 16 states in Germany. A central ambition here is that the communication of climate change should not cause readers to feel anxious, numb, or even enter a state of shock, but develop an interest and engage locally with climate change and its ramifications.

![The image shows the default mode of the web interface for Klimakarten. Without any set parameter in the search bar, all postcards are visible for the indicators. The postcards are arranged on the screen as they would lie on the table, by interacting with them the user can activate them and see the details of each visualization.](/uploads/screenshot-2024-01-01-at-20.42.51.png "The first view of the web prototype")

The journalists are able to embed the postcards on the homepage of the newspaper website and in articles via an iframe. They can alter the presentation of the postcards in four different modes and hereby customize them according to the needs of a given article.

![The visualization shows the energy consumption for new buildings in Potsdam. ](/uploads/screenshot-2024-01-01-at-20.47.30.png "Energy consumption for new buildings in Potsdam")

A longer description of the Klimakarten project can be found [here](https://uclab.fh-potsdam.de/projects/klimakarten/).

*Klimakarten has been a collaboration with the newspaper taz, in particular with Luise Strothmann, Lalon Sander, Jean-Philipp Baeck, and Jelene Malkowski. This research is connected with the project “VIDAN: Visual and dynamic arrangements of narratives”, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and conducted at FHP’s UCLAB.*

In the Klimakarten project we investigate the development of climate protection strategies at a regional level, in Germany.

Sonnige Grüße aus dem Klimaland

Every Saturday, readers can find *die Gute Nachricht* (the good news) on the cover of the Zukunft section, part of the wochentaz. The idea, developed by Luise Strothmann and Malene Gürgen together with their team, is to offer readers a positive take on an interesting and contemporary topic. Ranging from climate protection to the reduction of the gender-gap, each good news is introduced by a data visualization, blending photographic and design elements.

![](/uploads/zukunft_printed_2.jpg)

### Balancing topics, metaphors, and data visualization

The biggest design challenge we face with *die Gute Nachricht* is to always find a delicate balance between the topic, its visual representation, and the chart type. In the past, we had to work with very sensitive topics like cancer, migration, and the legalization of human rights.

The two examples shown below are a good example of the type of interpretation work we do when working on the graphics. The issue on the left depicts the decriminialization of queer sex by showing each country in the form of a flower. We chose flowers to signal the fragile condition queer people have to face and the importance of granting equal rights, beyond politics and religious beliefs. Similarly, the visualization on the right shows data about working hours. The images of people are picked from old archival imagery and strive at representing diverse workers in different scenarios.

![](/uploads/zukunft_printed.png)

### The pipeline: from manual drafting to digital design

Behind the scenes, the design process has to be extremely efficient due to the high turn-around. Each week we have to juggle between finishing the current graphic and work on the next concept. The image below shows the production pipeline of a standard issue, step by step The initial idea is usually sketched by hand and showed to the editorial team, who can ask for changes or express their ideas about the direction. Then a first low-fidelity digital draft is created, which again is used in a quick feedback round. Lastly, the graphic is finalized with the addition of labels, high-resolution assets, and filters.

![](/uploads/zukunft-pipeline.png)

"The Good News" is the weekly data visualization produced for the printed edition of taz, head of the Zukunft section.

die Gute Nachricht

Germany is one of the biggest money donors worldwide when it comes to Water Development projects. Journalists at taz have reported in detail on where these billions of Euro are channeled. The investigation took almost one year. In this period of time I supported the journalistic team at taz in making sense of the OECD data and produce insights on where, when, and how German money were channeled and consequently spent. The final outcome is a long read, published both in the printed and digital versions of taz’s newspaper. The articles are complemented by various visualizations slicing the data at the benefit of the reader. The image below shows the main interactive visualization included in the article. The cartogram shows the reported water stress of individual countries (mapped to the color) and the amount of funds, expressed in Million $, received to stop or hinder it.

![](/uploads/tazwater-interactivevis.png)

![](/uploads/tazwater-interaction.png)

Aside from interactive visualizations, the article contains a series of maps detailing the funding and water stress situation for specific countries which were at the center of our investigation. The image below shows the example of Syria, which has been chosen due to its special relationship with Germany. The visualization shows not only the geographic position, water stress, and funding situation, but also reports an additional layer of data, showing the funding development over time.

![](/uploads/syrien.png)

### Experimenting with small news widgets

Long reads are a popular format for data journalism pieces. Data visualizations cannot be interpreted without context and this often translates in detailed articles punctuated by interactive or static charts. This is not always ideal, especially if we need a visualization to become part of multiple articles or to be embedded in different parts of the newspaper website. For this project, I was tasked not only with the creation of static and interactive visualizations for the long read, but also with the creation of small, stand-alone charts that could be shown to the reader on the project’s landing page. 

For this reason, I designed and developed a self-contained visualization carousel: by swiping or scrolling right, the reader is able to follow the unfolding of a short story about water stress. The figure below shows an early draft of the individual steps part of the scrollying carousel.

![](/uploads/water-sequence-taz_vertical.jpg)

The concept is explained by showing different countries and explaining what are the implications of water stress, depending on the local climate, culture, and economy. A cartogram has been used to give equal visual weight to all countries, given the small size of the visualization. When in action, the smooth interaction allows the readers to go back and forth between the different slides and interact with the individual countries to obtain more information, as visible in the video below. 

![](/uploads/tazwater-video-3-.gif)

### Early design and drafts for mobile version

The initial drafts for the mobile version were already quite different compared with the desktop and tablet ones. The three sketches provided below show the different phases of the design process. The cartogram gave space to a list and then successively to a grid, depicting the countries according to their geographic area and assigning different colors and glyphs depending on their reported water stress.  

![](/uploads/tazwater-design.png)

Follow the water, follow the money: visualization-driven articles and scrollable visualization snippets for taz about how much money is spent by the German goverment on water development projects.

Wohin das Geld fließt

After gaining access to the MVRDV architecture studio’s archive, we decided to visualise how they talked about architecture for over 10 years. We started by collecting, cleaning and unwrapping all the e-mails between colleagues, contractors and the PR team. We extracted the relevant words that dealt with the financial, environmental or material aspects of architecture. Then we created two of visualisations that allow exploration, where users can filter relevant terms according to their category and frequency.
On top of this we trained an AI using the material for PR. Visitors can feed the AI few words to draft a speculative MVRDV project. @mvrdvsht is the twitter fee where this non-sense architecture is collected.



![](/uploads/mvrdv-timeline-filtered.png)



### From an archive full of emails to vis

Initially, the client approached us with an archive full of emails, press releases, and work in progress texts. No less no more: almost 30 years of email exchange between the MVRDV and its clients, contractors and partners. Emails spanned languages, formatting, and projects. Public and private: names, prices, types of wood, square meters – no piece of information was missing.

To start with such an archive is a complicated endeavor. It requires a smart and time-efficient pipeline to clean, process, and datafy all exchanges. Our objective: the key terms used in these long exchanges. To simplify the task we decided not to keep track of threads, but rather imagine the architects' conversations as a joint work of discourse: a poetic albeit pragmatic conversation about our cities. How will they look? What materials will be the most used? Who will be paid? And when?

![](/uploads/mvrdv-data-structure.png)

As visible in the figure above, the data cleaning pipeline brought us from the raw material to a structured dataset. The year was the most important feature. How many time over the years would one word be used? Are there words that become more popular in time? Hence the dataset includes how many time one term is used and to what category it belongs.

To determine the category we run a named-entity recognition algorithm, capable of extracting and recognizing terms, based on their meaning and belonging. We ended up with thousand of terms, ready to be visualized.

![](/uploads/mvrdv-timeline-filter.png)

The double-visualization interface presents itself like a small toy for MVRDV founders, employees, as well as curious users. The reader can filter according to word, category or frequency. From the visualizations it is possible to see how certain words appear, disappear, and then reappear again. Technical terms, materials, but also discussions about finance and people are central to the practice from this architectural sign.

Project developed for “MVRDVHNI: The Living Archive of a Studio” exhibition. The visualization arranges, on a timeline, the topics discussed by MVRDV in their documents and email exchanges, from 1990 to 2010.

MVRDVHNI: The Living Archive of a Studio

The special publication Anthropogenic Markers: Stratigraphy and Context explores and contours some of the historical contexts, epistemic settings, and conceptual interventions around the ongoing work of Anthropocene geology. In seven thematic dossiers, contributions from the fields of geochemistry and paleobiology, history and science studies, artistic research, archaeology, literary studies, and anthropology reflect on selected material markers of human impacts on earthly strata. Taken together, they form a unique interdisciplinary conversation across positions and perspectives, helping to map out and expand upon the many ways of tracing the evidence that defines the onset of a human-dominated and crisis-laden epoch.

![](/uploads/video_amd.gif)

![](/uploads/dmacp-visualization-expanded.png)

![](/uploads/dmacp-visualization-expanded-selected.png)

### Manaul revision and tagging of the essays

The opening essay of each dossier is complemented by interactive visualizations displaying its key temporal events. These visualizations are meant as a navigational interface that supports and encourage readers’ in-depth exploration of the essay. Events are mapped according to their temporal distribution and position in text, then plotted. The time axis itself adapts in order to fit hundred thousands of years on the screen. The causal relations among events are represented by arcs, spanning across the visualization. As the reader scrolls by, events are highlighted, accompanying the natural reading flow. Essays have been manually revised and tagged using a HTML syntax built on top of the W3C’s OWL time anthology \[https://www.w3.org/TR/2020/CR-owl-time-20200326] and custom identifiers for temporal events’ causality. The meta-data is then fetched and used to create the visualizations.

![](/uploads/dmacp-synthax.png)

This generative visualization complements seven thematic dossiers part of the Anthropocene Curriculum. These visualizations are meant as a navigational interface to support readers’ exploration of the essay.

Data Mapping of the Anthropocene Curriculum

Charted Lexicon is Popular Science’s column on data art. For each topic, they pitch a dataset and ask for a designer and/or artist to develop a data driven illustration. For the Spring 2021 issue, I was commissioned with an illustration on Bob Rosses work. The dataset consisted in the main color and subjects of his painting, extracted through image recognition algorithms.

The Joy of Painting have an interest in learning the craft. They want to chill, and Bob Ross, who hosted the program before he died in 1995, is a sure path to serenity. His subdued baritone and the gentle sound of a brush on canvas made him an ASMR artist for the analog age. You can almost feel stress evaporate watching the dabs and strokes coalesce into a landscape. Here’s a look at the science of elevating relaxation to an art form.

![](/uploads/pscsp21_charted_bobross_final_full.jpg)

Editorial data visualization produced for "The Charted Lexicon", the Popular Science's column on culture and society.

Charted Lexicon – Bob Ross



SENSES investigates potential socio-economic futures in the face of climate change and how this knowledge can be made accessible to a broader public. SENSES goal is to develop tools and approaches to make the new generation of climate change scenarios more comprehensible, culminating in a climate service for decision makers. Climate change scenarios are complex prediction of possible futures. Scientists, stakeholders, policy makers and activists have to deal with scenarios complexity on a daily basis. In the making of SENSES our aim was to provide a shared understanding on topics such as financial risks assessment, mitigation pathways, adaptation strategies, and so on. The project sees a number of partners involved, among them the Potsdam-Institut für Klimafolgenforschung and the Internationales Institut für angewandte Systemanalyse.

![](/uploads/senses5.png)

Our design method consisted in working together with scientists. One scientist and one designer conceptualized and developed single units of knowledge covering one specific topic. Our role as designers was relative but not limited to creating innovative climate visualizations, we also designed the graphical identity and the communication strategy of the project.

![](/uploads/senses4.png)

The consortium of the SENSES project has internationally recognized expertise in climate change scenario research and design and visualization techniques, and large experience in working with the user groups targeted in this project. The involved partners are the[ Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research](https://www.pik-potsdam.de/)[, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis](http://www.iiasa.ac.at/)[, the Stockholm Environment Institute](https://www.sei-international.org/)[, the Wageningen University & Research](http://www.wur.nl/)[, and the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam](https://www.fh-potsdam.de/).

A longer and more detailed description of the SENSES project can be found [here](https://uclab.fh-potsdam.de/projects/senses/).

SENSES is a project about climate change scenarios. Each visualization explains different climate futures to policy-makers, finance experts, and citizens.

Visualizing Climate Scenarios: the SENSES Toolkit

While all eyes were on the still-raging pandemic, the Pentagon quietly released their records of reported UFO sightings around the world (yes, really). The newly declassified information came on the heels of years of witness testimonies collected by the  for several decades. So, in need of a little comic relief from the monotony of lockdown life, we decided to comb through the new material and see what the data might reveal! Some entries were incredibly detailed, including close descriptions of each UFO’s design, brightness, and speed. Some seemed more offhand, or vague. All of them were weird. We had so many questions. Where do these testimonies send to come from? When are they most often reported? For a broader view, we designed a , complete with glowing hotspots of supposed extra-terrestrial activity, then a timeline dating back to 2017.

![](/uploads/ufo_timeline.png)

One trend immediately stood out to us: reports tend to come in during holiday times, when many people feel lonely. The first lockdown in 2020 saw a sharp increase in witness testimonies and we experienced an unprecedented sense of alienation. And what began as a fun and silly project - we aren’t serious UFO believers ourselves - became a poignant reflection on the chaotic time we’re living through, when we want to believe we’re not alone.

### Coupling overview and detail

Given the large number of testimonies, we initially designed visualizations that could give the reader a quick overview of all the UFO sightings. As visible in the figures above and below, these consisted of two large visualizations: a bump chart to show the temporal development of the phenomenon and a map to display its geographical distribution.

![](/uploads/ufo_map.png)

However, the self-scraped dataset – [coming from NUFORC](http://www.nuforc.org/) – also contained many rich textual testimonies. The individual entities have been visualized on a grid, following their temporal order and regardless of their geographic location. For each testimony, the shape of the UFO was extracted and condensed into a few categories, represented on the grid through small animated icons. As visible in the figure below, this translated into a comprehensive visual overview of all testimonies. By hovering over the individual icons, the user can read the testimony connected to the encounter.

![](/uploads/ufo_archive.png)

A personal project about UFOs. The different views show how extraterrestrial sightnings have increased in the last decade worlwide.

Close Encounters

The article has been developed in the broader frame of my MA thesis. Time as an urban dimension has always been problematic for urban researchers due to its highly abstract and context-dependent nature. In this work, I present a method to critically address temporal data through contextual information. The growing interest in critical studies on data is leading to promising frameworks and theories on how to acknowledge and appraise data context and multiple perspectives. Feminism, urban geography, digital humanities, and other fields are slowly absorbing these theories and are developing interesting approaches to practically make use of them. However, urban studies still lacks a scalable and reliable method that operationalizes these ideas for the city: how can spatio-temporal data be examined critically to visualize meaningful and contextualized temporal patterns of the urban environment?

![](/uploads/times6.png)

Time of a Square is a long-read, scrollable article to explore temporality in Rosenthaler Platz, Berlin. Apart from designing and supporting the development of the final article and its visualization, I critically addressed and structured a novel data collection model to gather situated knowledge in the urban context. The resulting work is both an interactive webpage to navigate situated data and a series of printed artifacts. The project was exhibited at Torino Graphic Days 2019.

![](/uploads/times3.jpg)

![](/uploads/times4.jpg)

![](/uploads/times5.jpg)

Time of a Square is an interactive long read scrollable article and printed booklet that let the reader explore temporality in Rosenthaler Platz, Berlin.