Migration, adaptation to climate change, radicalisation in groups or individuals, inequality and unemployment, freedom of movement of people and goods: these are some of the themes that shake the global public opinion – and influence our opinion as well. Orienting and acting in the complexity of these themes is extremely difficult: the huge amount of data and information produced online, the wide- spread availability of documents, articles, opinions and comments can create more confusion than clarity. Losing in the (over) abundance of this information, or – if you are active in the debate – sticking to your “filter bubble” losing sight of other positions or entities involved is a common experience.

If the web did not help to make the controversial issues more understandable, however, it made their complexity evident: these issues do not have clear and unambiguous solutions and generate a dense debate that interweaves alliances and oppositions involving many different actors through digital conversations. At a first analysis the situation stalls: complexity, by definition, is impossible to reduce without losing its wealth; At the same time, it remains incomprehensible without its simplification.

As communication designers we can not avoid contributing to understanding these phenomena and orientating possible actions. As complex and controversial problems can’t be faced by a single actor, we can represent and share the debate that defines and nourishes them so that any stakeholder can find its own position and say “I am here”.

At the end of the course, the students will have learned:

• Knowledge in the data visualisation, information visualisation, information design disciplines, and the role of communication design;
• Historical evolution and dynamics of convergence of the disciplines, scope of application;
• Knowledge and use of the visual variables and application of communication design to visualisation of data and information;
• Knowledge on tools for data manipulation (Excel, OpenRefine) and for the creation of visual structures (RAW, Gephi);
• Knowledge on data harvesting/scraping (Web Scraper Chrome Extension) and data collection through APIs;
• Understanding basic statistics and software for their application (R);
• Knowledge of the rhetorical-argumentative figures (especially those based on analogy and metaphor).

The course will be divided in three main phases in which students will be working in groups, supported by two individual assignments. In each phase, students will confront various sets of problems related with the information design field: picking sources, constructing a coherent narrative, dealing with unstructured data, designing for advocacy. The three phases have all a different output, giving students the chance to experiment on how to design visualisations for different kinds of publics.

The supporting themes, tackled from a different perspective in each phase, are: the role of the designer as an author, data handling and its implications, the rhetorical value of data visualisation. Each phase has a different output, giving the students the possibility to design visualisations for different types of public.