[Music] Hello and welcome to the Data Generalist and Podcast. I'm Alberto Cairo and I'm Scott Klein. So these weeks Scott and I talk to Claire Bok-Honji Bad, who is the Senior Data Visualization Designer at the International Crisis Group. Her team recently published the Fight for C-Twey, a visualization of the ongoing Civil War in Myanmar that looks at key geographical shifts in the conflict. Claire is a really talented designer and cartographer. That's the reason why we invited her. She originally contacted me and I took a look at her work. I was not familiar with her work. I said, "Well, you will be the perfect guest for a podcast." So here is the official invite and that's how we got her. We go really deep into Claire's process into the project itself, how it was built, and how she thought about the data visualizations as a part of the storytelling. We'll have links to Claire's project and the show notes. So let's get into it. [Music] Claire, I'm a Senior Data Visualization Designer at the International Crisis Group. And I'm part of a very small team that is experimenting on using data and design to impact policy. And you work for the International Crisis Group? And I'm guessing that many of our listeners are not familiar with your organization. So can you give us some background? Sure. So the International Crisis Group is a nonprofit international organization that is committed to preventing managing and resolving deadly conflict. And the way that we work is that we have experts spread across the globe. And they do research and analysis that is then feeding into high-level advocacy with the aim of impacting policy towards peace building. Claire, tell us how data visualization and cartography fit into the work that the International Crisis Group does. Yeah. So in terms of the work that we do, we don't really fit into the traditional sense of what is called data journalism because we're not in newsroom. But we sit closely to data journalism or in the orbit of that. We publicly publish and we're visible. And we're trying to make these complex dynamics about conflict understandable. And so what we've really been exploring with or experimenting with is using the same ingredients that the extraordinary world of data journalism has created and has allowed to flourish. That's accurate data. That's a story. There's a goal. And we're using sort of open-source data and tapping into that to tell stories that are visually compelling and that can reveal patterns. So in a way, we're really borrowing from the world of data journalism and bringing it into a space that hasn't really gone before for policy. One question that we usually ask our guests is about their superhero origin story that usually interests me a lot. It's like how people end up doing this type of work. So what is your origin story? How do you end up making maps and charts and visualizations? We'll accept a super villain origin story as well. Exactly. Either a copy of a super villain story. Yeah, either one. All right. We don't discriminate here. I often say that I'm a political scientist turn designer. My academic background is in conflict studies, international relations. And I considered myself more of a writer. And although I was a very visual person, like I would mind map all the my university courses about Middle East actors. And or the US Constitution. But I kind of stumbled luckily across the book by David McKennais. Information is beautiful. And there was this tree map showing billions of dollars spent on the Afghanistan and Iraqi war. And it was comparing it with the net worth of Jeff Bezos and or the US military spending. And it was just so clear in one tree map how costly the wars had been. And I thought that was really powerful. The sort of pivotal moment for me was when I was hired at the UN Refugee Agency in 2016. And we were reporting on the Mediterranean emergency at the time. So the wars in Iraq and Syria made that a lot of people were fleeing the countries and arriving in Europe. And I kind of had an aha moment at that point because when I was explaining to my family and my friends what I was doing, I was actually showing them the map. At the time, there was a really toxic narrative in the media about migration that had already-- that was already active. And in one map, you could show people-- my aunts, my uncle-- you could show them that a lot of the people were actually leaving to neighboring countries, to Turkey, to Jordan, to Lebanon. And so that was amazing to me that I could debunk a myth. And there was not this invasion in European countries. To me, that was really powerful. And there was something about also the responsibility behind how it was being made. Because I was thinking, if these were big red arrows, this would be a completely different message. And so the design component of that made me want to learn mapping and learn design. Because I thought, if I'm going to do this, I need to actually learn how to do it ethically and do it well. Something that you said really caught my attention, which is that you had a moment of-- you had an epiphany. These days, I am writing an article commemorating the 20 years of Hans Rosling's famous presentation at the TED conferences that was in 2006. And I'm writing an article about my relationship with that talk, which I had a similar experience. It was an epiphany. He said, oh, wow. So it can be used this way. I know that this is going to sound pretty basic to people who have been in the visualization for many decades. But those moments of epiphany are really important to bring people into the field, revealing that type of power. It makes you love the craft even more. I agree. And it especially resonates with me that it was a tree map that sort of inspired you to get it to data visualization. I was teaching data visualization at the new school not that long ago. And I was trying to make the point with my students that data visualization is a much newer craft than you think it is. But I made the point that some of these data visualizations are we're invented in our lifetimes. And I pointed out that the tree map was invented in the 1980s and the class laughed at the old man. Anyway, I don't want to monopolize the conversation with what I usually call all grumpy, uncle stories. So you are the guest here, Claire. Let's talk about one of your memorable visualizations because we invited you to the podcast because you participated or led an incredible story for the International Crisis Group about a Myanmar. Why don't we start with just for the listeners who haven't read the story? Why don't we start with a quick overview of the story and sort of what it's called, what it's about, and where people can find it? Yeah, sure. So usually we partner up with experts. So this was really a three person story. And the lead author, Thomas Keen, is our senior consultant on Myanmar. And so he had been doing research and to give a bit of context, Myanmar has been in an all out civil war after a coup. And we were looking at the region to the west of Myanmar. So it's a region called Rakhine State. And it draws the coastline of the Bay of Bengal. And it borders Bangladesh. And the Eric and Army is an armed group that has been de facto controlling this region called Rakhine State and a bit of Chin State above it. And the only three pockets of the region that are not controlled by the Eric and Army are on the coastline and one of which is called Situé. And that's the capital. So it's not an island, but it's an almost island. It's controlled by the military junta. And so what Tom was doing between February and March, he had been actually just looking at local media reports about clashes between the Eric and Army and the central military. And it's in one of the reports that he saw that one of the villages had been taken control of. And so that's what we're talking about.
So he went to look at satellite imagery because this region is only accessible to really a handful of diplomats and humanitarians. The access is really quite cut off. And so he went to look at satellite imagery on Google Earth, which he had access to. And that's when he actually saw that there was more construction and fortifications and roads by the military in this region. And so from there, I work closely with Paul Franz, who typically on these type of projects, I lead on the production and the design. And he brings the front and engineering and the satellite imagery analysis. And so he worked with Tom to also cross check satellite imagery. And so we use different libraries. And from there, he was able to see not only the expansion of military buildup to defend from the Eric and Army, but he was also able to see that in the year before, we could see the villages had been emptied out before the construction. So it meant that people had been forced to flee their homes and had been moved to the south of the region in situate. So during that research process, he did a few more interviews with his contacts because he leads on the qualitative research and he was able to confirm that with people who were on the ground. So usually, Tom does the writing. And we sort of already start the design process. I usually do a bit of a discovery to immerse myself in the context and the topic. So usually I take photos. What does it look like? Who are the people? What do they wear? What's the architecture like? And this is not invented for me because I took a trick from Gabrielle Marie, who I admire her work a lot. And she had this concept of a stylescape. And so I usually go into that process to inform my design choices. And so I knew the emotion that we wanted to convey also through this piece. It was an alerting piece. So the dark mode became obvious to me. There was this-- it resonated also with the electricity power cuts that we were observing. And then usually we have a process where we put all the pieces of the puzzle together, which is sort of my favorite process. I kind of see it as like a music sheet where we put the text and the images and we make adjustments as well in terms of what is the best transition, how does it feel? What are the labels? What should we emphasize? What should we not emphasize? And from that moment, there's a sort of dance that happens between the design and the engineering where Paul, who was leading on the front end of engineering, I usually have this vision that I do a storyboard in Figma. And he takes that vision. And even if we hadn't ever done these scroll layer transitions that we see in all the bigger media outlets, I was saying, Paul, can we do this? And usually Paul says, yeah, no problem. It's fine. And he always finds the solution. And then usually I go back to him and I say, oh, it's great, but we can make it better by. So we kind of pull each other up. And that's how we came to that result. Just listening to-- you describe the process. I can say with great confidence that this is the process in every newsroom on the planet that does data journalism and visual journalism, with maybe some differences around the margins. But you started by saying, you're not a journalist. But I can tell you, with confidence you are doing visual journalism. It is the same at newsrooms around the world. I was about to point out that it is a process. It is a workflow that is followed in the places that do the best data journalism. As I get in order to do this type of work properly, you need to operate in this very organic intertwined manner, in which designers sit with writers and writers with editors and the editors with the engineers, whatever, everybody needs to be in the mix. But that was not the case in the past. So in the past, newsrooms had a much more linear process in which, whereby reporters and editors came up with this story, ideas, they wrote the stories, and then much later in the process, when the story was almost finished, they got the designers involved. And unfortunately, that's still the case in some newsrooms in some countries that still follow this sort of like all-fashioned way of doing things in which, where reporters and editors are, sort of like the most important pieces in the mix and then designers are seen as sort of like decorators of the story. So I agree with Scott. I think that you are doing that this is an amazing story. And there's a reason why it is such an amazing story, is because it is the result, the product of this type of process. I should probably add at this stage that it is the same in the policy sort of sphere that policy organizations weren't built around data visualization. And so it took us quite a few years to get to a point where we can collaborate in this way with our experts and researchers. And it's not always the case that we are able to come to such collaboration and result, I would say. But this is the instances where it does work the best in terms of having early collaboration, being able to exchange throughout the research process so that it would directly inform the design. I also find that it's extremely helpful also in terms of data collection, in terms of leveraging open source data that we have access to. Because I think that our most impactful products are that there is one recipe, which is if we use open source data that others have access to. And we verify it with the expertise that our experts have. And/or we create even data sets from the knowledge that they have on the ground that hasn't been yet created into a data set. So like small data sets, then we have a product that is bigger than the sum of its parts really. And we can really make a difference if we have access to the people that we want to bring it to. And I think that has been really what has been driving also our work as a small team to push the boundaries in the way that the structure also of the workflow has changed or needs to change because data visualization isn't really only a research tool or a communication tool. It's both. And so there is that sense that we need to do it together. That makes good sense. So what do you hope that people who experience the project? What do you hope that they take away from it? And as you thought about it as you were building it, how did your thoughts about what you wanted people to take away from it, how did that drive some of the design decision making? Yeah. So what I really wanted people to feel was that this was about the people that are caught between the Eric and army and the military junta. I wanted people to understand that there was very little access that it was an alerting situation and to bring attention to that situation. And we can inform policy about this topic for the people who are caught in the middle of these two warring parties. So the way that it informed my decisions was, for example, in one of the scroll layering I had a moment where you have the villages. And so the way that I visually encoded it was a fill. And then it transforms into a shape that is unfilled. And so you get a really a real sense of the village is being abandoned. And there's a whole sequence for that, which if you compare it to a music sheet, it's a long note of sound for that specific point. Tell us now a little bit more about the technologies behind these projects. What tools you use, some things like that. In this case, we used a mix of QGIS map crater and CSS. And so map crater is a tool that really made it easier for us to connect more quickly, more efficiently, open street maps with Illustrator. So what we did was that for more complex data analysis, we use QGIS. But for sort of quick map making, we really love this tool. It's a great way to just plug in SVD.
into Illustrator. And I should probably add that for creating the data, for transferring from the satellite imagery to inserting it into Map Creator, we use a shared tool with the analysts where we draw lines, polygons, points, and then we're able to extract them as like KMLs or DOJsons, and then we're able to plug them into any cartographic software, including Map Creator. So it was really a way to fasten one of the steps in the process, but that doesn't exclude that we use the good old-fashioned QTIS. - One last really important question to ask about the story, where can people find it? - Yeah, great question. So it's on our website, it's at crisisgroup.org. And it's also spread on social media, we promote it, and that's it. - Claire, tell us how the crisis group thinks about impact for projects like this. - I think it's important for me to say that the way that we think about impact, we have colleagues working on that, but broadly speaking, the way that we measure it is a change of understanding or behavior or policy. And so in that sense, data visualization can play a big role in shaping understanding, in shaping knowledge. So for example, we have created a map, an interactive map on the West Bank, and how the Israeli outposts have been expanding there, and that was screened at the UN Security Council in a five minute speech there. And so that's already some type of shaping understanding of the people who are in the room. And then we had a few other like good examples of a change of behavior. We published a piece about which country, which member state had mentioned or not the different crises at the UN General Assembly. And one of the diplomats there told us we included Sudan this year because you've showed that we hadn't included it last year. And that was like a direct change of behavior. And so I think the last one, which is the ultimate target which is a change of policy that's much harder to claim or to prove because usually it's a big effort and we work with advocacy colleagues. So we can't say that the visualization had direct impact, but we had a case in 2024 where the UN Security Council was about to vote the renewal or not of law that to make it simple would renew aid or not to many countries where groups were listed as terrorist groups. But it meant that civilians wouldn't get access to the aid. And it's in this advocacy effort that we shared a really simple bar graph. Of course there were design choices behind that bar graph. It was like a hierarchical and we had a good annotation that had the key takeaway message. But it was really about delivering the graph at the right moment, at the right time. And the leader of the 32 member states coalition said, you know, this was incredibly timely. We leveraged that graph that you made. And I think that I will always take with me because it means that it really did shape the understanding at the right time, at the right moment. And that's really what we want Tarts to do is like, you make a chart and you want people to make sense of it and you want to change their behavior for a positive change. And so what's next? Any projects coming up that you're free to talk about that you're excited about? Sure. So we have a few projects in the works, one of which I think it's safe to say is on critical minerals. And we are looking at different visual evidence on, you know, minds and gold and Jade. And so that I'm really looking forward to. Well, Claire, thank you so much again for being with us here today. I thank you for your time. That's been amazing. And I really hope that Lee Sinner is well. Take a look at your project. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the data, journalism podcast. We are hosted by Scott Klein, Simon Rogers and me, Albert Chaupera. Our producer is Ozzy Linna's good man. The music you can hear is the sound of data made with two tone and app that turns numbers into tunes. Do you have a new data driven story or project coming up? You can tell us about it if you email us at data,
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