nexTT – new storytelling with data
The nexTT team is dedicated to the question of how to not only make data more accessible, but also how to deal with it in a much more lively and constructive way. “Emotional Data Storytelling” is the concept of Sven Ehmann and Nicolas Bouquín, who together with five other Fellows are based in the Urban Ideation Lab, the laboratory for the urban quarter of the future and which is the heart of B-Part Am Gleisdreieck.
Typically, IT professionals or analysts prepare data and present it in a more hermetic way. In contrast, visualizations in media with diagrams and graphs usually look appealing, but are susceptible to distortions and manipulation. nexTT, on the other hand, breaks new ground with “Emotional Data Stroytelling”.
Emotional Data Storytelling may sound like an original buzzword construction, but it does involve an innovative approach to dealing with data in an unusual way. But what does that actually mean, “emotional data”? An example: A football match ends with 1 to 0. The pure result of the match provides a very small data set, but for the fans of both teams it is a highly emotional event. The complete timetable of Deutsche Bahn, on the other hand, is a data set that is larger by dimensions, but which hardly triggers emotions or tells stories (with the exception of delays).
Then again there are extremely relevant data whose meaning is not intuitively accessible to our everyday understanding, although it would touch us deeply. For example, the global climate crisis with the critical mark of warming our earth by two degrees. But these two degrees tell us nothing. On the contrary, our common sense registers such a small increase in temperature as hardly relevant. In order for these two degrees to tell us a vivid story, a simple metaphor can be used: If a person has a fever of 40 degrees, he is very ill. If he has a fever of over 42 degrees, he is dead. The same applies to the fever of our world. And in this way data can tell us stories instead of meeting us as mere numbers.
The motivation behind Sven Ehmann and Nicolas Bouquín is therefore several approaches to dealing with data in a completely different way than usual. On the one hand, more information is needed for a more critical handling of data, as it is prepared for us by instances with their own interests. In principle, we must learn to literally “read” data and its representation. Diagrams and other visualizations often look appealing and convincing, but are to be enjoyed with great caution. The use of colours and visual stylistic devices alone can steer perception in the desired direction. Usually the necessary context for real understanding is also missing. And unfortunately, there is often a clear method behind data visualizations: one wants to achieve a certain statement and bends the statistical material and the form of representation into the desired pattern.
nexTT goes the opposite way: You don’t already know the answer, but you ask new questions and find out which data can deliver results that weren’t expected before. For example, as a Fellow in the Urban Ideation Lab, obviously one asks the Park at the Gleisdreieck. At the park, a life of its own develops, most of which we only experience excerpts of or parts of the same sequences when, for example, when we commute daily to work through the park. But what fluctuations, dynamics and patterns emerge? What sound does the park have at what times? What is its pulse? In this way, data can make the hitherto invisible visible. nexTT is planning a work on this as part of its time as a Fellow in the Urban Ideation Lab.
The two founders of nexTT consider themselves to be an intensively networked, informal think tank that cooperates worldwide with experts and analysts from very different disciplines. They are embedded in innovation processes and also use completely new possibilities of data visualization such as AR components or dynamic user interfaces.
The highest maxim in all projects lays in idealistic ambition and positive social impact. This does not exclude economic efficiency. Sven Ehmann and Nicolas Bouquín also work for start-ups and innovative companies, but never with the aim of selling more detergents. Ultimately, they want to strengthen their information sovereignty and explain how data is handled. So that the old, often misleading stories are not repeated, but a new, critical and more lively handling of data is created. Especially since hardly anyone today can take a step without generating and analyzing data records, nexTT wants to help us regain our sovereignty and recover the stories floating in the flood of data.