Outlier 2024 Speakers

At Outlier 2024, we'll delve into positive disruptions within the data visualization realm, spotlighting those who challenge conventional organizational norms to find constructive alternatives. Positive disruptors inspire innovation by encouraging experimentation with new techniques and approaches.

Registrations for Outlier 2024 are now open! Taking place from June 12-14, 2024 as a hybrid conference, you can choose to join in Chicago or virtually. Registration ends on May 31, 2024.


Keynote

Visual Villainy: How to Undermine Humanity With Dataviz

Eli Holder: Principal at 3iap, Inc
Gabrielle Merite: Founder & Creative Director at Figures & Figures


“Positive disruption” is for suckers. You’ve heard “how charts lie.” Maybe you’ve fibbed with statistics. Perhaps you’ve even dabbled with truncated y-axes. But in this talk, Gabby ‘Malevolence’ Mérite and Evil Eli Holder will encourage you to be more ambitious with your evil data deeds. Instead of just misleading audiences, why not unravel the social fabric of society? Or sabotage an election? Or spread misinformation? Maybe you think pandemics are fun, and you’d like to see more of them? In this talk, we’ll explore three design techniques that are scientifically proven to promote the three P’s of evil dataviz: Plagues, Prejudice, and Polarization.

 

Thinking with Data Visualizations, Fast and Slow

Steven Franconeri: Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University

Learn how to design visualizations that tap into the power of the visual system—while avoiding its limits—in this fun, interactive, and practical tour of cutting-edge visualization cognition research.


Mainstage talks

Infographics and Data Storytelling

  • Catalina Perez | LinkedIn | Instagram

    This talk explores translating complex healthcare data into accessible infographics, balancing scientific accuracy with audience comprehension. It covers crafting visuals, adapting corporate branding, and infusing relatable metaphors for empathy and emotional appeal.

  • Jane Huang | LinkedIn

    Carly Bobak | LinkedIn

    Jacqueline Wernimont | LinkedIn

    This talk offers a unique approach to data visualization by integrating insights from natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze linguistic choices within doctor's notes justifying recommended sterilization procedures. By uncovering gender and sex biases embedded in these records and highlighting individual narratives alongside broader trends, the project aims to foster empathy, understanding, and awareness of historical injustices.

  • Valentina D'Efilippo | LinkedIn | X | Instagram

    Valentina D’Efilippo, designer and co-author of “Britannica’s Encyclopedia Infographica”, will take the audience on the journey of transforming the iconic Britannica Encyclopedia through infographic storytelling – outlining challenges, solutions, and valuable lessons. Attendees will leave with an appreciation of the complexities of researching, designing, and editing over 200 unique infographics, along with practical insights applicable to their own projects.

  • Youyou Zhou | X

    Data visualization can be used as a powerful tool for persuasion. How's that done and what do we need to watch out for? The talk will share with the audience a few simple techniques I learned through work to achieve that.

 

Business Intelligence & Analytics

  • Gaelan Smith | LinkedIn

    Presenting the right metrics at the right time at the right level of granularity for the right audience is a nuanced endeavor. Which metrics and visuals lead to the outcomes you want versus useless – or even harmful – gamification? Through the lens of software development, we’ll explore how to choose visuals to positively disrupt behaviors, especially if you aren’t a developer yourself. Not just for the dev world, this is valuable to anyone looking to choose visuals that lead to better conversations with stakeholders and both reflect and drive transformation.

  • Michael Gethers | X

    At McLaren Racing, we are building intuitive, interactive data visualizations to help us make decisions at the race track faster and more effectively. This talk will discuss this iterative process of collaboration with our engineers, drivers, and team leaders, including the technical decision-making process and the lessons learned around the importance of stakeholder buy-in when introducing disruptive changes to established industry practices.

  • Nick Desbarats | LinkedIn

    When designing a data visualization, one of the trickiest—and yet most consequential—design choices is choosing which chart type to use. While less experienced chart designers tend to believe that this is a simple decision, more experienced chart creators know that it can be quite tricky, and may even believe that it’s a skill that can only be developed through years of experience. In this talk, educator and author Nick Desbarats shows examples of decision trees from his new book, Practical Charts, that allow chart creators to reliably make expert-level chart type choices.

  • Saloni Shah | LinkedIn

    This talk delves into the design and UX process behind creating complex yet intuitive data dashboards, using the example of NZero's decarbonization platform. Explore how data visualization can empower climate action and drive customer interaction in climate-tech, leading to informed decision-making and impactful outcomes.

 

Inclusivity and Accessibility

  • Lisa Vissichelli | LinkedIn

    Say goodbye to large data sheets with a photo or icon of John Doe and Jane Smith. Personas are polarizing and can overemphasize physical traits over deep mental models that inform businesses on how to really connect with leads. This talk will reframe the persona narrative to focus on what really matters in strategic customer storytelling with custom crafted persona experiences.

  • Jamie Perera | Instagram

    Jordan Wirfs-Brock | Mastodon

    Duncan Geere | Mastodon

    In this talk, we share a manifesto for a new approach to sonification that centres community, real issues, and danceability. Attendees will learn DIY techniques for exploring objects and data through sound -- no special software or musical background required.

  • Joshua SmithLinkedIn

    Accessibility is the source of our most life- and society-changing products we use every day: keyboards, touch screens, virtual assistants, and more. Accessibility is often seen as a constraint, but if data visualization designers can tap into accessibility they’ll be tapping into one of the most creatively disruptive forces in the history of technology.

Data Literacy, Data Culture and Data Teams

  • Aleszu Bajak | Blue Sky | Mastodon

    Disruption is easy to talk about but true organizational change is elusive. What this talk will communicate is what I've learned through building a new data visualization team: Reimagining the way we conceptualize, scope, build and launch our data visualization projects will not be successful or joyful without considering the incentives and motivations of your team and going concentrically outwards from there, always socializing the vision, providing guidance and technical assistance, and being patient and empathetic.

  • Leticia Pozza | LinkedIn | Instagram

    Pei Ying Loh | LinkedIn

    Is there room for feminist data studios to effectively change our industry? Despite starting Odd Studio and Kontinentalist from opposite sides of the globe, Leticia and Pei Ying, a Latina and an Asian studio co-founders bring their perspectives, beliefs and attempt to answer that question.


Lightning Talks

Infographics and Data Storytelling

  • Kenneth Field | X | BlueSky

    Map design requires a good understanding of the map’s purpose and its audience’s needs, as well as at least some understanding of how to design a map that works. This talk presents initial results of research that tests common, and assumed cartographic practice, and explores how, and to what extent you can defy well-understood advice with solutions that work. It encourages positive disruption in map design through an appreciation of what are loosely called cartographic rules (best practices), and how they can be broken with success.

  • Sam Hart | X

    At a small Cuban café in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, a poster—one of a street map of Havana, Cuba—caught my eye. I couldn’t explain my initial instinct, but I felt like there was a glaring mistake and misrepresentation. Come with me on my journey to explore what happened.

  • Alex Gurvich | X

    NASA's Earth Information Center (EIC) is a new partnership between 7 federal agencies to communicate how we observe a changing Earth. NASA has built two physical exhibits to communicate these insights: the first located at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. and the second in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. This presentation will highlight how data storytelling and data visualization with dashboards and "beauty pieces" are used in these physical exhibits.

 

Business Intelligence and Analytics

  • Kevin Ford | LinkedIn| X

    The Solution Framework is disruptive to a beginner’s workflow of jumping too quickly to gather data and develop the dashboard. The positive disruption is to put the focus on the audience and their problems, and confirming solutions with sketches and wireframes, resulting in higher value and usage.

  • Martynas Jočys | LinkedIn

    There is a trend in the data visualization and other design fields described as "less is more". Literal application of this slogan often leads to sub-optimal designs and experiences. In the talk I will quickly explain why, and provide an approach to counteract this trend in a healthy way.

 

Data Art and Innovation

  • Hermann Zschiegner | Instagram

    This talk will examine the role of data visualization in the design of modern memorials as a strategy to help explaining the horrible events we try to remember. We will look at projects such as Peter Eisenman’s “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”, Jer Thorp’s work on the “9/11 Memorial”, MASS Design Group’s “National Lynching Memorial”, as well as my own design for “Gedenkort Reichenau” – a memorial for a forced labor camp in my hometown of Innsbruck, Austria.

  • Sophie Sparkes | LinkedIn, X

    Uncover the power of combining data & hand-drawn art! This talk explores contrasting approaches used by Taha & Sophie to visualize ecological data.

 

Inclusivity and Accessibility

  • Emilia Ruzicka | LinkedIn | X | Instagram

    This talk will cover actionable recommendations for how to make data reporting and visualization more gender inclusive, even when the data available is not as inclusive desired. It will address issues that arise with both written and visual language when working with gender(ed) data and how to navigate them.

  • Hyeok Kim | Website

    While data sonification has been put to powerful use for immersive storytelling and data accessibility, creating sonifications with existing tools is challenging for many authors with limited audio engineering knowledge. To ease the creation of sonification, I introduce Erie, a JavaScript library for declaratively programming data sonifications that supports exploring the rich design space of audio graphs via customizable and extensible auditory instruments and channels.

 

Data Literacy, Data Culture and Data Teams

  • Janina Madoff | LinkedIn

    To provide patients in an emergency room the care they need, staffing and workflow changes need to occur before volume surges. We developed a detailed, easy to read dashboard that presents volume forecasts ahead of throughput challenges. The view is delivered into emergency team communication loops at the start of each day, when the insight is most actionable.


Panels

Physicalization

  • Gulrez Khan | LinkedIn

    Discover the innovative use of physical data visualizations in recent protests, where powerful visuals are transforming narratives and fostering empathy for social causes. Witness the disruptive impact of these visual storytelling techniques as they reshape activism and ignite change.

  • Regine Abos | LinkedIn | Instagram

    This talk looks at vernacular data visualisations — analogue representations of self-tracking data collectively designed by non-designers— and how they can be used as a bottom-up strategy for civic engagement and behaviour change. Using consumer food waste in Australia as a case, it presents how recording food-saving actions through visual metaphors like ninjas and sheep can facilitate a deeper understanding of families’ own unique household dynamics, instil a sense of autonomy and accountability, and lead to longer-lasting habitual behaviours that contribute to environmental regeneration.

  • Tatiana Lahera Kalainoff | Instagram

    Most data physicalizations end up being large scale art installations, but after going through all the trouble of building something physical, why aren’t users encouraged to touch and play with what’s been built? While data physicalizations are a refreshing break from our lives glued to screens, they also have the potential to empower users through physical engagement. In this talk, listeners will learn about the value of tangibility, the power of play, various learning types, why the industry should invest in opportunities that give users agency in increasing their own understanding of complex processes that impact their lives and project examples that thoughtfully put this approach to the test.

 

Gen AI

  • Nikita Rokotyan | X

    Large Language Models (LLMs) are making their way into every aspect of our lives. We'll discuss how LLM embeddings can be used to visualize large corpora of textual data, such as training datasets or actual conversations, and potentially detect malicious activity against LLMs.

  • Rutuja Pawar | LinkedIn

    “We all fear what we do not understand." This sentiment by the renowned author Dan Brown perfectly captures the initial apprehension many of us feel towards the integration of AI in creative fields like data visualization and design. In my talk "Synergy in Sight: Collaborating with AI in Data & Design," I will demystify how AI can not only augment our creativity but also work alongside us accelerating the process to uncover insights and tell stories. By understanding and embracing AI as a collaborative partner, we open the doors to unlock new dimensions of creativity and innovation in our workflow.

  • Tiange Wang | LinkedIn

    I-yang Huang

    This talk explores the transformation of numeric data into human-perceptible qualities through the projects DataWagashi and Treelender. DataWagashi converts data into multisensory Japanese confections, engaging taste, smell, texture, and interaction, while Treelender uses tree color data and computer vision to create a visually gradient calendar. The talk will provide new perspectives on data communication, merging data visualization with tangible media and design.