On 30th April, PubSci is delighted to welcome Dr Brock Craft, our third speaker of the 2021 programme, for a talk titled Picture This – Why Data Visualisation Matters in which Brock explains how data visualisation can be powerful, beautiful, and a matter of life and death.
On 28th Jan 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center. Could better data visualisation have prevented this disaster? (AP Photo/Bruce Weaver, File)
Talk Details
Data is all around us – now more than ever as we navigate a pandemic in daily charts, and we struggle urgently to weigh covid-19 fatalities against the lesser risk from vaccination. But data is more than tables of figures; how we present and visualise data can have literally life-or-death consequences for how we understand it, how we interpret it, and what patterns we discern in it.
Dr. Brock Craft is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. He specialises in Information Visualisation, Human-Computer Interaction, Physical Computing, and Learning Design.
In this talk he will demonstrate why data visualisation matters to everybody, how there is genuine beauty to be found in data, and how a simple data visualisation could have prevented the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster.
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Dr Craft has spent much of his career finding innovative ways to represent data in appealing, accessible, or aesthetically pleasing ways. Associate Professor at the University of Washington since 2015, Brock was previously Lecturer in Physical Computing, at Goldsmiths, University of London and programme founder/Senior Tutor on the MA in Information Experience Design at Royal College of Art, London.
He has a Master’s in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) from DePaul University, Chicago, and a PhD in Data Visualisation from University College of London Interaction Centre (UCLIC)
In 2007 Brock helped form Tinker London, a design consultancy focused on creating products that bridge the digital and the physical worlds. As a partner at Tinker, Brock designed products and experiences for high-profile clients including Sony, Nokia, The Evening Standard and the BBC, often using data visualisation techniques to create appealing visual representations.
Bridging his industry work with teaching and learning, Brock served as a research fellow at the London Knowledge Lab, where he focused on Learning Design, tools for pedagogy design, technology-enhanced learning, and interactive learning objects. “I have been investigating how people interact with technology and working to make it better for my entire career.”
Brock is the author of Arduino Projects for Dummies (2013) and co-author of Raspberry Pi Projects for Dummies (2015), both published by John Wiley & Sons
He is also creator of the Brockenspiel – a musical instrument that turns bar codes and magnetic swipe cards into music played on tubular bells, as featured on the BBC.
Florence Nightingale’s famous Rose (or “Wedge”) Diagram of the Causes of Mortality in the Army of the East”
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Viewing the talk: Virtual PubSci is hosted live online via Zoom. We also stream events live on our YouTube channel where they remain available for at least 28 days.
Like all our events, this talk is free to attend, but you will need to register with Eventbrite to access Zoom. We have included the option to donate a small amount when you register to help cover web hosting fees etc.
Ticket sales go live at noon on Saturday 10th April. You’ll receive a confirmation email; the Zoom link is emailed on the day of the talk and available in the eventbrite online event page at the event start time.
More details on the event registration page.
Important Note: We aim to make our events accessible to all. You don’t have to pay, and you don’t need to install Zoom – Zoom can be run in a browser and events are streamed on the PubSci YouTube channel. Anybody wishing to support PubSci in our science communication can choose to make a donation when registering with eventbrite or contribute to our PayPal money pool, which goes directly to keeping PubSci online.
Please check our Future Events page where you can also subscribe to our iCal feed and don’t forget to check out our downloadable PDF schedule, which includes confirmed speakers with dates TBC.
![The eyes of a Robber Fly [Artwork: R Marshall, source photo © NHM London]](https://pubsci.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/magic-robber-fly.jpg "Magic Robber Fly")
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