Presentation · Data Walk

Depending on the setting in which the data installation is hosted, on its lifespan, on the tone of the content, and your available budget, you can complement the installation with other elements that enhance its fruition. The following paragraph lists a few presentation options you could explore further when designing the setting for the news installation. The core idea is that, while the physical installation functions as a hub to present the data supporting your story and to foster social interactions around it, it is not the only one. You can devise ways to make the installation a multimedia one, by embedding print, video, audio components and by referencing back to other online articles of your publication.

• Add printed panels before, around or after the data walk.
• Add QR code that directly link participants to articles, video, data visualizations, audio, and other materials present on your website, so that the participants can learn more. In this sense, the place where you host the installation could be perceived as a physical/digital archive where participants can navigate through the whole dossier of information a newsroom has on a specific issue.
• Add sensors, for example light sensors, on the walkable area of the installation. This way you can trigger specific actions (sounds, audio explanations, lights, etc.) when someone is walking on specific parts of the data walk.
• Place a projector on top of the installation, so that you can project additional information on the base or on the data walk curves themselves, to accompany the experience with more context. We do feel that this should be done carefully: the presence of visual stimuli might distract the participant from the experience of walking and feeling the data trend through the sense of balance.
• Organize talks, debates and events and use the data walk a stage. Such events could feature the journalists who have worked on the story; local politicians, public figures, experts and other key people referenced in the story; member of the community wishing to share their opinions on the issue; and so on. Some newsrooms are even organizing journalistic shows - maybe this data walk could be part of the set?

These are some options to say that every installation will in practice be unique to the content and context. And while its fruition is technically the last phase of the project, it should be the very first thing you have in mind before you move on to design, model and build the physical data experiences.