“Data doesn’t matter. What matters are the people.”

Olivier Schulbaum of Platoniq interviewed me for the third issue of Wilder Journal about why the Data Vandals take data out of the digital world and into the street. The headline says it: the data isn’t what matters. What matters are the people gathered around it and the conversations that start between them.

We talked about data literacy: it’s up to designers to make things people can understand, not to teach people to understand our work. We covered using emotion to spark curiosity or empathy without manipulation or slogans; LA Loves as a positive complement to 311 complaints; the sticker grids at the Great London Survey, where people explained their answers and read the results together; and why data professionals need more social training, because data needs context.