This opinion article was written by GWSC Environmental Data Scientist, Dr. Erin Menzies Pluer.

If you have never been to a Gordon Research Conference, I highly recommend that you look to see if they have a conference in your field. I attended my first one in July and it was unlike any other research conference I have been to. I went to the Visualization in Science and Education Conference hosted by Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

The conference was small, and the schedule included ample time to meet and get to know other attendees. The materials provided before the conference explicitly stated that the atmosphere is friendly, so feel free to introduce yourself to anyone you don’t know. That turned out to be 100% true. I had so many interesting and engaging conversations, and I came away with so many networking to do’s. Reach out to that person to invite them to lab meeting, follow up with someone else about a possible collaboration, introduce that person to my other colleague….. you get the idea. It significantly expanded my network and sparked so many interesting ideas for my work in data visualization.

Unsurprisingly, the technical content of the conference was excellent. I participated in the poster session; my poster was titled “Simple Visualizations of Complex Environmental Data for Policymakers.” My poster got a lot of positive engagement, and I was awarded Best Poster* of the conference! It was a big surprise (and honor) to have my poster recognized at a session where visualizations were at the forefront of discussion!

As I was preparing for the conference, I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to share and how I wanted to present it. Visualizations are a big part of what makes our work at GWSC so effective. I was going to have the eyes of data visualization experts on my work, and I wanted to make the most of it.

At GWSC we are often attempting to answer requests for information or questions that come our way. Figures and visualizations are a big way we do that. The question I wanted to ask the other conference attendees with my poster was “How effective are my visualizations in answering the questions posed?”

So, I initially structured my poster with five questions we were asked, the figure we used to answer the question, and the answer to the question that we included in our response to the stakeholder. I deliberately chose to highlight different figures that we use, questions from different parts of the world, specific questions and vague questions. I tried to cover the full range essentially.

But as I thought it through a bit more and put myself in my conference attendee shoes, I felt dissatisfied with this approach. I knew that if it were me, I would read the question, look at the figure and then read the answer without stopping to think it through for myself. I knew that if that happened, I wouldn’t get the feedback I was hoping to get, which was, “How effective are my visualizations in answering the questions posed?”

I am going to go on a brief tangent, but I promise, we’ll come back to the poster. I have small children, two little girls in fact. They LOVE to read. We read (most) every night at bedtime and no matter how many books we read they always want one more, I know other parents can relate. And do you know what kind of books my younger daughter is into right now? LIFT THE FLAP BOOKS! A FLAP!

I realized I could cover the answers to the questions on the poster with a flap! Then the person viewing the poster would be encouraged (or forced) to consider for themselves the answer to the question based on the presented figure.

This proved to be very effective. During the poster session I got to hear people talk through the question and the figure out loud, which was very informative. Once they felt they had puzzled it out they often looked at me and announced their answer before they looked under the flap. Often, they had it right and were delighted to find their answer matched mine.

I also really loved witnessing the joy on the faces of very serious scientists when they noticed the flaps. They loved the interactive nature of it!

The answer to my starting question, “How effective are my visualizations in answering the questions posed?”, is a resounding “Quite effective”! The feedback I got reinforced the importance of simplicity, annotations, and color encoding. I also learned that we have some improvements to make in how we display the range of possible future scenarios which is great to know.

The conference was such a wonderful environment, and I had so many fun and thoughtful conversations during the poster session. I am grateful to have connected with such a passionate community of data communicators.

*Two posters were awarded best poster! Congratulations to Racquel Fygenson of Northeastern University for receiving the award as well.