How game design and data visualization can help in systems design: understanding and making changes in complex systems. Examples look at food access / deserts, podcasts, COVID, the US labor system, and the tech industry. Adapted from a talk for a systems design course. Views my own and not of employer or other organization. Creative commons image credits: - Cook-Anderson, Gretchen. “Snapshots from Space Cultivate Fans among Midwest Farmers.” NASA, NASA, 16 Sept. 2009, https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/farmer_imagery.html. - "Cooking" by omefrans is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0: https://wordpress.org/openverse/image/e32f7eed-66a4-4b06-82c3-2c313f28fd9f - "Construction worker for the Panama Canal expansion project" by World Bank Photo Collection is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0: https://wordpress.org/openverse/image/0cdd65a3-500c-4fae-9a69-242ea29b261c/ - “Screenshots.” OpenTTD, OpenTTD, https://www.openttd.org/screenshots.

1. Systems action through game,
systems, and information design.
Visualizing
For Systems

2. > About Me Understanding Action Coming Together
We believe in a safe, sustainable,
ethical approach to protein, fit for a
21st century food system.

3. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
Information design helps us understand systems.

4. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
What information design (visualization) provides.
Contextualization of findings: We can (and
should) talk to people to understand how
COVID impacted their finances but we can also
see how those conversations fit into a broader
narrative. Link.

5. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
What information design (visualization) provides.
Understanding subgroups: We can (and should)
talk to people in tech to understand their
experience but we can also look top down to
understand how happy different disciplines are
and what factors drive that happiness. Link.

6. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
What information design (visualization) provides.
Comparison between groups: We can (and
should) talk to people to understand how what
people think of when they think of their health
but we can also listen at scale. Link.

7. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
What information design (visualization) provides.
Connection to data: We can (and should) talk
to people about what is pushing them to one
degree versus another but we can also see
those experiences in the aggregate. Link.

8. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
What information design (visualization) provides.
Situating in time: Data provide a way to
situate experiences in a broader context.
Link.

9. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
Information design helps us understand systems.
?

10. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
Systems design and systems understanding.
In Einstein’s time this is how far science had got. We could
do really small problems with a few objects, with simple
interactions, or you could do huge problems with millions of
objects and simple interactions.
But what about everything in the middle? …. Now, this
middle region is where complexity science lies and this is
what I mean by complex.
Now, unfortunately, almost every single problem you can
think of to do with human behavior lies in this middle
region.
Hannah Fry, Is Life Really That
Complex?

11. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
Systems design and systems understanding.
Kim Reas / Periscopic
US Gun Deaths
Link

12. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
Systems design and systems understanding.
Ben Fry / Fathom,
GE Annual Reports
Link

13. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
Systems design and systems understanding.
Jonathan Harris,
We Feel Fine

14. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
Systems design and systems understanding.
One more example.
Link.

15. About Me > Understanding Action Coming Together
Data + Anthropological Methods
My user centered design course focused on one person (watch how someone makes latkes). My information
design course focused on stories in aggregate (who is producing food?).
Increasingly, there’s
an intersection
between these
different disciplines
where qualitative
and quantitative
understanding
combine.

16. About Me Understanding > Action Coming Together
What about taking action?

17. About Me Understanding > Action Coming Together
Let’s go back to 1999
The two best selling games were…
SimCity 3000 Roller Coaster Tycoon

18. About Me Understanding > Action Coming Together
Efforts to make these into decision making tools.
SimHealth SimRefinery

19. About Me Understanding > Action Coming Together
More recent examples…
Forio: Supply Chain
Enroads: Climate Change
CalAdapt: Sea Level Rise
GOM: Ocean Health

20. About Me Understanding > Action Coming Together
Why game design?
Games are very good at creating
inclusive collaborative spaces
where action can be taken by many
and the consequence understood
quickly.
Game design has had a lot of time
to think about how to build
fluency in complexity.

21. About Me Understanding Action > Coming Together
Let’s go deep on a final example…
We are going to take a deeper
look at food deserts and how data
+ info + game design work to
create understanding and action.
Link.

22. About Me Understanding Action > Coming Together
Let’s go deep on a final example…
Moving from measuring solutions
to questioning desirability and
values.

23. Finishing up…
Some jobs at
https://theeverycompany.com/join
Open for collabs!
Some toys at https://gleap.org.

24. Thanks!

25. Ajami, Amer. “1999's Best-Selling Games.” GameSpot, Gamespot, 27 Apr. 2000, https://www.gamespot.com/articles/1999s-best-selling-games/1100-2446252/.
“Ben Fry.” Arts at MIT, MIT, 17 July 2017, https://arts.mit.edu/cast/symposia/being-material/participants/ben-fry/.
Bonnington, Christina. “RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic Is Here; BRB While We Recreate Our Childhood.” The Daily Dot, DailyDot, 25 May 2021,
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/rollercoaster-tycoon-classic-app/.
Brown, Mark. “Can We Improve Tutorials for Complex Games?” Game Maker's Toolkit, YouTube, 31 May 2021,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GV814cWiAw.
Cheung, Joanne. “Natural Language Processing: A New Way to Listen to People about Health.” Medium, IDEO CoLab, 17 Aug. 2020,
https://medium.com/ideo-colab/natural-language-processing-a-new-way-to-listen-to-people-about-health-8cfe9bece1ce.
Cook-Anderson, Gretchen. “Snapshots from Space Cultivate Fans among Midwest Farmers.” NASA, NASA, 16 Sept. 2009,
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/farmer_imagery.html.
“En-Roads Climate Scenario.” En-Roads, Climate Interactive and MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, Mar. 2022,
https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=22.3.0.
Essmaker, Tina. “Jonathan Harris on the Great Discontent (TGD).” The Great Discontent (TGD), The Great Discontent, 15 July 2014,
https://thegreatdiscontent.com/interview/jonathan-harris/.
“GA Annual Reports.” Work, Fathom Information Design, https://fathom.info/reports/.
Gutierrez, Andriana, et al. “Global Supply Chain.” Our Work, Forio, https://forio.com/work/harvard-global-supply-chain-simulation/.
Sources

26. Sources
Hardt, Maria-Xenia. “Kim Rees on Data Visualization: There's a Story in Every Piece of Data.” International Symposium on Online Journalism, Knight Center for
Journalism in the Americas, 28 May 2013, https://isoj.org/kim-rees-on-data-visualization-theres-a-story-in-every-piece-of-data/.
Harris, Jonathan. “We Feel Fine.” Number 27 - The Work of Jonathan Harris, Johnathan Harris, 2006, https://number27.org/wefeelfine.
“OceanViz.” Global Ocean Modelling, Lenfest Ocean Program, https://www.globaloceanmodelling.org/visualizations/oceanviz.
omefrans. “Cooking.” Openverse, Wordpress.org, 11 May 2010, https://wordpress.org/openverse/image/e32f7eed-66a4-4b06-82c3-2c313f28fd9f.
PacificCuda. “SimCity 3000 How-to Let's Play Series Preview ... - Youtube.” PacificCuda, YouTube, 29 Aug. 2016,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f43PUFEIpQg.
Pells, Rachael. “Pigeons Help Explain the Awesome Power of Maths in the Christmas Lectures.” Inews.co.uk, Associated Newspapers Limited, 23 Dec. 2019,
https://inews.co.uk/news/science/christmas-lectures-dr-hannah-fry-pigeons-ai-maths-378516.
Radke, John, et al. “Sea Level Rise.” CalAdapt, Geospatial Innovation Facility at the University of California, Berkeley, Jan. 2017,
https://cal-adapt.org/tools/slr-calflod-3d/.
Rees, Kim. “United States Gun Death Data Visualization by Periscopic.” U.S. Gun Deaths, Periscopic, https://guns.periscopic.com/.
Salvador, Phil. “When Simcity Got Serious: The Story of Maxis Business Simulations and Simrefinery.” The Obscuritory, Phil Salvador, 19 May 2020,
https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/.
“Screenshots.” OpenTTD, OpenTTD, https://www.openttd.org/screenshots.
World Bank. “WordPress.org.” Openverse, Wordpress.org, 13 June 2012, https://wordpress.org/openverse/image/0cdd65a3-500c-4fae-9a69-242ea29b261c.