Raising Awareness of Natural Disaster Risks With Concrete Data Visualizations
Do more concrete forms of visualization bring risks closer?
Traditional forms of data visualizations abstract individual data points into aggregate geometric elements. This could distant the audience from what the data represent in the real world. Construal Level Theory (CLT) in psychology supports this notion by showing that concrete visual representations produce closer perceptions of distance in time and space.
In my undergraduate senior thesis project, I draw on CLT to investigate how we may utilize concrete data visualization designs to raise awareness of commonly overlooked natural disaster risks by making them feel closer and more certain.
