It all began last week, in a city of huge grace.
And wondering how cool would have been
to look around through the eyes of “Media Space”,
we found in a great workshop the solution within.

Economic statistic concerns understanding complex, multidimensional, ambiguous and dynamic phenomena building formal representations (models) based on statistical data. Communication Design addresses complex phenomena to interact with them building multi-dimensional visual representations based (in some cases) on statistical data.
The DensityDesign Lab approach, partially modified despite past editions, tries to foster this alliance in order to explore socio-economic phenomena that present both representational and visual problems. In fact they could be:
complex;

* multidimensional;
* dynamic and evolutionary;
* not numerically measurable if not qualitatively;
* ambiguous and fuzzy;
* not dichotomous;
* of great impact on people and society.

The goal is to contribute to the construction of representation and visualization model respecting and preserving the inner structure of the analyzed phenomena, allowing users to know (see) them as a whole. This is not primarily a design issue, but an epistemological one; the aspect of visual representation and communication is only one part of a bigger topic. The broader aim is helping in build a cognitive process that integrates and combines different disciplines and skills.

27 August 2008
Michael Bond
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926711.500-how-to-keep-your-head-in-scary-situations.html

This has led Slovic to suggest we need to imbue statistics with more emotional significance so that we take them to heart. “We learn how to deal with numbers from a young age as cold or abstract entities – to read them, add them, multiply them – but we don’t learn to think about how they represent reality in a way that conveys feeling and meaning. We need to think how to teach people to step away from their intuitive response, which is insensitive to magnitude, and think more carefully about what numbers represent.” [...]

Density Design Lab, Knowledgecartography.org and ovrflw, under the nom de plume Writing Acamenic English, are proud to annouce that Murmur is one of the selected project for VISUALIZAR’08: DATABASE CITY.

During any design activities a lot of ideas fail and it is very difficult to understand how and why it happened.
The Mister O comics strip by Lewis Trondheim lead me to reflect on the experience of failing and to consider how to learn from it. Using the irony of this language it is possible to step forward the personal involvement and clearly ponder upon these situations we, as designers face every day.
I was so excited about this theme that I suggested it to a student as a subject for a final master thesis. He refused, of course.

HANDLING CHANGES THROUGH DIAGRAMS
To change towards a more sustainable development could means to make decisions not only with a systemic approach, but also to be able to decide in the right time: the density. It seems that, when the discipline of Design integrate a systemic approach with the competences of designers in visualization, it can cope with dense situations, providing effective artefacts – diagrams – to improve the decision process and making profit from the richness of complexity.

About Complexity Maps
Torino is a city on the move. The tradition forms of representation are obsolete or inadequate to depict the current reality and the dynamics in progress. How can the city be made legible and comprehensible, understood as a complex organism and as a web of physical and social networks? The urban territory is a system whose complexity is growing, in which a multitude of tangible and intangible flows (people, goods, information) stratify and interconnect.

Output
Environment Group

Main Research Conclusion:
The lack of communication between different kinds of actors (people, media, administration) overshadows the environmental and pollution problem of the project area.

History / Future Group

Main Research Conclusion:
In the past social systems like the illegal allotments kept the connections between local actors alive. The place has been disconnected through top down design actions.

Mobility Group

Main Research Conclusion:
The current use of the park has been entirely determined by the a series of external factors that suggest its future dynamics

People Group

Main Research Conclusion:
The locked loops of local policy and money perpetuate a situation of local abandonment which feeds illegal activities and social & political exclusion.

(In)Security Group

Main Research Conclusion:
the perception of safety in the area changed between 2003 and 2008

The Hospital system map “From client to patient” introduced by… more

election day, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

Density Design (GS+DR) is returning officer and secretary in one of the polling station during the italian election day 2008.
The compulsive obsession for graphs and diagrams led us to draw this…