“Data is in the eye of the beholder”: a conversation with Leff

Mary Reddy at Leff, whose internal design work at McKinsey back in 2018 was a major influence, sat down with me to talk about why better data visualization starts by ignoring the data and focusing on the audience.

We discussed the fact that audiences aren’t one thing, and their lived experience is the best material you have. All data is shaped by choices, so presenting it as unquestionable truth throws away most of its value. We’d rather ask people: here’s the data, what do you think about it? Our discussion circled around the cow chart and the San Francisco homelessness work, which maps 230 services across nine city agencies and funders to show how complicated the system is. We also talked about AI, and how the time it saves should go back into user research and building empathy.