Last Wednesday I was organizing a team evening for IT colleagues from Stora Enso Helsinki office. During this evening, not only their cooking skills but also their creativity were put under test. The task was to make a meal… visualizing data from Stora Enso yearly reports!
Data visualization in not a new concept for most of us. Nowadays, many people have to deal with information is graphical format on daily basis: line chart, pie charts, bar charts and other types of diagrams. Data visualization allows information to be communicated more clearly and effectively. It makes data more accessible, understandable and usable.
Examples of traditional data visualization from Stora Enso 2013 report
Data visualization can also be completely mind-blowing. Josh Worth’s project If the Moon was Only 1 Pixel, for example, allows us to understand mammoth sizes and distances of the solar system much better: what would they be compared to 1-pixel moon?
In Where People Run project, Nathan Yau mapped data from the workout app RunKeeper on the city maps with darker lines indicating favored courses:
But data visualization doesn’t have to be done only with conventional information technologies. You can also do it with… physical objects! The surface area of each of plate is proportionate to the food consumption in the region depicted on the plate by Nadeem Haidary.
And San Francisco-based Meshu is creating jewelry from… your location data.
Believe it or not, but you can also play weather data on on a musical instrument or make a sculpture out of it! Check this TED talk.
So, why cannot food be a medium of data visualization? Would you like to know what my colleagues cooked? What data they visualized and in what ways?
To give you some examples, one team was visualizing gender distribution of Stora Enso employees by country in cocktail glasses:
Perch (80%) and carrots (20%) for Finland
Tomato (19%) and mozzarella (81%) for Sweden
Olives (15%) and pasta (85%) for Germany
Cucumber (18%) and apple (82%) for Poland
Carrots (13%) and orange (77%) for Russia
Cashew (16%) and shrimp (84%) for other Europe
Eggs yellow (42%) and white (58%) for China
Red peppers (8%) and mushrooms (92%) for India
Lettuce (14%) and ceviche (86%) for Latin America
Red Pepper (24%) and pineapple (76%) for other countries
Another team was inspired by Stora Enso people too. They visualized the same gender diversity statistics per country with white chocolate and self-made marmalade: each plate represents the gender split in one country with respective decorations. On the picture below from left to right: black and red for Germany, Latin America with vibrant colors, white and red for Poland, yellow and blue for Sweden.
Also they represented where Stora Enso people are located worldwide with blueberry shake: big bunch with white chocolate on the top representing Europe, smaller on the left with orange on the top standing for South America and the smallest with lime for Asia.
And, finally, the delicious pumpkin soup on the left draws our attention to health and safety issues: eating healthy food which pumpkin soup definitely is, wearing a helmet and… that you can get mushed as a pumpkin if you don’t take care of your health ;)
Until next blog post, don’t be afraid to think out of the box and try new creative solutions! And yeah, stay safe! :)
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