About

This blog will share processes, tools and tutorials to help you present and share your data in creative ways.

There is much talk right now about how we live in a time of data and visualization.  There are lots of pretty pictures generated everyday by amazing coders, statistics gurus, and so on.  Then there are normal people. Normal people aren’t statisticians, software developers, or graphic design experts. Normal people don’t have a big budget to pay lots of data consultants. Normal people in regular jobs have data that they know can help them, and they want to use it.  Normal people need Data Therapy.

This blog is the next step in the MIT Center for Civic Media’s Data Therapy project.  We’ve been trying to address this need for assistance on data presentation because people are asking us for help. This project springs out of small community groups asking me to help build their capacity to do their own data visualization and presentation. Since then I’ve been working with various organizations to have their needs guide the project. There are some low-hanging fruit here – we hope to introduce you to them in this blog.

Of course, being from the MIT Media Lab, I think new technologies can help. Web-based tools are lowering the barriers of entry for making engaging and creative presentations of data. Rather than encouraging partnerships with epidemiologists, statisticians, or programmers, we see an opportunity to empower organizations by building their capacity to do this work themselves. You should be the one that knows your data best, and these new tools can help you tell your story with data in exciting and creative ways.

Does this sound relevant to you? If so, welcome to Data Therapy.  Please, have a seat on the couch.  I’m your therapist, Rahul Bhargava.