The practices of economics and design appear to have little in common. But they share common ground when it comes to intervening in real world problems. Those, for instance, where poverty must be tackled (or hygiene improved, energy saved, or ever more cars parked).

Both these professions, along with businesses and governments, are one when their work interacts with the consumer, citizen or user—different terms for the same equally intractable and ultimately, central human being, especially when seen as a psychological creature, rather than just a bundle of physical or even rational wants. 

This is territory traversed by previous columns like ‘Good Design: It’s All in the Mind’  which appeared a little over two years ago. It referred, not for the first time, to Daniel Kahnemann, who won the economics Nobel in 2001. And somewhat presciently, to Richard Thaler, who would win the big prize three weeks later. 

BDK’s work is as inspiring for thinking about design as these earlier winners, because it affirms kindred ways of thinking, ideologically and practically.

BDK’s work is as inspiring for thinking about design as these earlier winners, because it affirms kindred ways of thinking, ideologically and practically.

BDK have been recognised for giving great force to experimental economics as it applies to tackling poverty. Their work champions the randomised controlled trial (RCT), a type of experiment regarded as the highest-quality evidence in medicine. Briefly, randomly selected patients are given the treatment that’s being investigated, and the results are compared to the untreated ‘controls’. 

The aim is to discover which (medical, or in BDK’s case, anti-poverty) interventions work, against the background that many programs fail. Incentives, the dominant tool proposed by economic theory, or subsidies, can underperform or backfire. Implementation isn’t always to blame, and indeed the behaviour of the intended beneficiaries can seem puzzling. Or irrational, as economists would have it. 

It finds, perhaps intuitively to some, that the poor stay poor in part because they think differently from the rich. They are less likely to borrow money to make an upfront investment expense that would benefit them in the long run, for example. They are, apparently paradoxically, likelier to borrow to save. A theme that runs through the BDK work is that the poor have trouble thinking in terms of a future. For one, the rich, too, can make similarly silly decisions, but can survive them. The poor may find the effects of a bad call irreversible—no future.

The deep design of the BDK approach rests on human-centred practice, a phrase enthusiastically espoused by designers. By treating the poor as people to be understood, rather than mystifyingly stupid, the practice is inherently empathetic. The poor person is rational, once the peculiar circumstances are understood; the fault is in the intervention, not its target. 

The deep designer will also approve of the BDK method’s deep pragmatism rather than its theoretical nature. It focuses on what it can change, rather than why it works (the ultimate reward for the theorist). It proceeds from a first-approximation observation about the inner workings of a problem and tests it via an RCT. If deworming Kenyan kids improves school outcomes, then subsidising the pills makes sense. (Interestingly the already affordable deworming pills were effectively adopted only when entirely subsidised—why commit to an upfront expense with uncertain benefits?). This gives an unimaginably large return on investment—If it were a school-performance improving drug, what would you pay?

This pragmatism leads to a type of cautious, reluctant theorising that should be dear to the design temperament.  Proceeding from practice to theory is an underrated source of scientific knowledge. And ultimately, maybe the theory isn’t there? So be it. 

pragmatism leads to a type of cautious, reluctant theorising that should be dear to the design temperament.  Proceeding from practice to theory is an underrated source of scientific knowledge.

Yet it’s a common criticism of the BDK way. The interventions don’t always transfer well; the Kenyan experience could fail to replicate. Local situations require local solutions, or they might not. Economic and medical RCT shave the same limitations: the difficulty of true randomisation, or that variations in individual outcomes might be large even if the average effect is favorable, and so on. Some raise ethical concerns (informed consent, and the withholding of benefits to the control arm, for example).

Thinking on poverty has typically rested either on the great themes of economics (inequality or inflation, for example) or on explicit welfarism. Yet their effect on an individual’s experience of poverty is indirect. Put another way, the average person does not experience the effects of GDP. 

Like design, the BDK approach affirms the importance of the small, tangible and directly observable intervention, without challenging grand theory. The recognition that small things matter is food to the design soul. That an experience can be altered to great benefit; that perception is as real as physical reality. 

The recognition that small things matter is food to the design soul. That an experience can be altered to great benefit; that perception is as real as physical reality. 

If a poor person behaves more appropriately when wages are paid directly into his bank account, than paid in hand, then how we pay matters. This marginal detail could be the difference between a path that perpetuates poverty and one that leads, just maybe, to a transition to a non-poor state. A practice that becomes a new default may work where hours of explanation fail, because practice often changes belief more reliably than the other way around. 

Understanding objective factors (those that everyone is subject to, all the time, like prices) in the light of a subjective ones (those that ultimately drive action, for varying reasons, like pride or risk) that results in a good system or well-designed objects. Designers, and problem solvers in the social domain—that’s all of us, to a degree—should delight in and internalise these ways of thinking. Start with reading ‘Poor Economics’ (it’s a breeze). 

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First published in a slightly modified form ‘Experiment and Reason’ in Business Standard, 26th October in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

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Built into both is their adversarial nature, an organised contest of minds and bodies. They are meant to produce not just a winning side, but a win for an electorate or a sporting audience, extending beyond the side that wins. But ‘adversarial’ now seems too tame: confrontational or gladiatorial fit better. With the difference that much of cricket is now organised along commercial rather than national or state lines, and so some of its gladiatorial nature of the game is a creation of marketing, especially since the Packer revolution.

cricket is now organised along commercial rather than national or state lines, and so some of its gladiatorial nature of the game is a creation of marketing

Take a look at cricket league logos, such as those of the IPL, freed from the forced dignity of national representation and admire the aggression that they picture. Party logos don’t track this way but every citizen has noted the changing tenor of campaign language and explicit appeals to tribalism (us vs them).  And cricketing behavior, never short of ugly aggression lurking just beneath the surface of the ‘gentleman’s game’ that it never really was has kept pace. Model codes of conduct get ever more strict, the level of oversight seems greater, yet the violations seem more brazen.

Both elections and cricket have moved far from their Westminster or MCC roots. The World Cup is more representative of cricket’s present and future than Test cricket or T20 is. It’s perched nicely between the poles of national representation and contest-based entertainment. Country and sponsor names coexist on T shirts. Appropriately, coloured uniforms appear midway been whites (albeit with football numbers, now) and the neon luridity of the IPL colours.

English cricket was elitist. Captaincy implied class, and Gentlemen and Players as they were quaintly called, were distinct. Indian cricket was too, to a lesser degree. It is less so now, because its social base has widened, and also because pure competitive ability appeals more to the paying fan. Indian elections were never elitist in the cricket sense, though ruling classes could be. Yet elitism has been (a belatedly acknowledged) part of the last two elections. But even here, the popularity of a winner conquers everything. (Perhaps even ideological opposition: the next five years will tell).

If it’s popular, it is right; the score matters. The arbiter of success is numbers. And that’s where data comes in.

We may feel the elections and choose our leaders on emotional grounds, yet experience them through the lens of numbers. Television screens are dominated by numbers, which seem to form a frame around the anchors and the conversation. On results day, they could be a rectangular garland around the winner. There is no attempt to guide the eye.

If it’s popular, it is right; the score matters. The arbiter of success is numbers. And that’s where data comes in. 

In the 2104 elections, NDTV’s screens stood out for their clear, focused design with analytical conclusions, conversation, and live data nicely balanced. Yet a colleague couldn’t actually spot these data on the NDTV screen; they were ‘too clear’, and she appeared to miss them because they weren’t in a familiar thicket of party scores. In 2019, NDTV’s style had adapted to the mainstream, its studio picture comfortably contained in a reassuring nest of state-wise, part-wise and otherwise data.

Both cricket and election reporting feed off the modern obsession with numbers and data. The systematic reporting and visualisation of data is one of modernity’s features. For a few days, around both contests, every citizen becomes highly numerate, a temporary magnet for numbers. Simply quoting them is enough.

Cricket, like baseball, naturally generates data; every action is a countable event, punctuated by moments of rest. Other sports must keep up (among many others, football has shots on goal, and tennis has unforced errors). Early generations of baseball and cricket fans would attend matches and keep score on specially printed scorecards. These are now memorablia, but the role of statistics in how we view cricket is even greater and perhaps more insidious.

Televised cricket has eclipsed the physical spectacle. With the giant screen television replays at stadiums, the arenas need no longer be differentiated. Cricket coverage is now a heavily numerical enterprise, with ‘Manhattans’ and ‘worms’ (look them up) being part of everyday discussion.

In subtle ways, they can are replacing our recollection of events and how we model them in our minds. Visualisations like Hawkeye that predict the trajectory of a ball are the real thing; the real action is a surrogate. Replays, split screens, super slow motion all present an alternate reality. But the sheer presence of numbers may lead us to value them over the reasons that drew us to the game: visuality, character, conflict.

A courageous fightback under crazy odds that turned the course of the game can be remembered—or reduced to—a recitation of the key numbers that described the circumstances. An entirely dissimilar innings may look numerically similar, with the appropriate adjustments.

As designers who deal with the complexities of behaviour know, numbers can excel at concealing, too. Ratios and aggregates can obliterate key differences (the average Indian is 55% male, as the joke goes).

Just by their presence, numbers lend authority; the owner of the data controls the conversation.

Just by their presence, numbers lend authority; the owner of the data controls the conversation. It’s as true in marketing, or medicine, both becoming more ‘objective’ in this narrow sense. Digital media by their very nature are literally made of data, and the opportunities for thinking-by-numbers are immensely greater than in any activity in human history. The possibility of reaching precise and dubious conclusions is greater than ever, because what can be counted may not count.

It’s time to push back and attempt to grapple, uncertainly, with the mind and its interactions, rather than aggregates of numbers. Un-measurable ideas may be immeasurably important.

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First published in a slightly modified form ‘Everything that counts’ in Business Standard, 8 June in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

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Further, sight trumps the senses, and we live in the era of media and images (exposed to exponentially more than in any earlier age), visualised data ought to be better still, to instruct, explain and persuade. With the hopeful rise of a design culture in companies, storytelling with data, the intersection of two buzzwords, is an admired persuasive technique in the boardroom. And embedded in the popular culture.

Yet such data visualisations were a feature of the Enlightenment, blooming in the 18th and 19th centuries and achieving ubiquity in the media age of the 20th. They sprang not from designers (who hadn’t yet been ‘invented’), nor the draughtsmen who drew them but from the creative imagination of scholars, practitioners, and activists.

The 18th century scientist-philosopher Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen, probably invented the modern graphical timeline with his work on the lives on learned men. But argument, rather than education drove others. By 1800, William Playfair (“engineer, political economist and scoundrel”) had created the language of economics and statistics graphics: the bar, pie and other elements, but also more complex figures arguing for lower taxes. John Snow’s 1854 London map locating cholera cases made the case for an extended water supply.

In 1858, Florence Nightingale, famous as a campaigner for hospital and home sanitation, created the ‘rose’ diagram. Its wedges quantify the causes of death in the Crimean war, and showed that infection killed more men than did war wounds. The graphic was key to her campaign, leading to sanitary reforms, and winning funding to the cause (diverting it from scientific research was one of her political achievements). Over the next 60 years, life expectancy rose and infective mortality fell sharply. A life-saving rose.

These works are unsurpassed both for the influence they had on policy when they were published but also because they are imitated and reprised a century and a half later. I think they switched on a light in our consciousness, letting us ‘get’ how data and graphic communication can combine. Data visualisation has become a professional sub-specialty within graphic design.

In our times, Edward Tufte, a social scientist and statistician dominates the discourse in the field with brilliant analysis, rich scholarship and provocative argument, delivered through beautiful self produced books, lectures and amplified by a Yale University position. His arguments represent both a polemic, and an ethic for the craft. Tufte insists on integrity, never exaggerating the highlighted effect.. But also on compactness: data should reveal the maximum, in the least area that will allow reading, using the least non-data area, and even the least non-data ink. Violating these rules leads to ‘chartjunk’.

In the best examples, many from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the data pattern becomes visually self-apparent, especially when viewed from a distance, as picture from which features leap. Consider a contour map, whose lines represent areas of equal height. Closer lines mean sharper slopes. It takes little effort to spot peaks (also, aptly, known as saliences) plains and valleys, while accurately reflecting height and position.

This approach can apply to all sorts of data, such as time-dependent data on a railway schedule. But they thrive, like Tufte’s favourite examples, on dense, complex data sets. The more detail, the better (To simplify, add detail, says Tufte). Also on multi-variate data. Minard’s 1859 classic piece on Napoleon’s disastrous 1812 Russian campaign, lauded by Tufte as the best ever information graphic maps geography, longitude, temperature and the thinning line shows the drastically shrinking army.

It’s a severe, worthy ethic, but not the last word on the subject. For one, Tufte prizes neutrality, advising restraint on the urge to conclude: let the data speak. This may be a false ideal. Every representation has its own differentiated emphasis.

But more urgently, the communicator is concerned with message, not mere data. Florence Nightingale’s wedges graph, ignored by Tufte, uses areas rather than lengths to represent the mortality figures: impact, not fairness is her goal. The reasons for the ‘Rose’ shape are somewhat technical, but wedges certainly aren’t the most direct way to show the data. They overlap, and hide some data. Close to the chartjunk line?

Her collaborator, the statistician William Farr, like his Queen at the time, declared declared himself ‘not amused’. “We do not want impressions, we want facts…the dryer the better.” he advised. But Nightingale hoped for people to see what they might not read: It was an appeal, not an evaluation.

Nigel Holmes’ graphic for Time (pictured) flagrantly crosses the chartjunk line, using humour, emotion and a bit of leg to draw readers to notice and respond. Tufte is scornful; we are delighted.

Meanwhile, information graphics (in trade slang, ‘data viz’) have become a pop graphic trend. Information has become a style. Posters of beautiful visualisations abound, until you look closer: the shapes are gratuitous, the data contrived or deliberately frivolous. It’s as if we have so much data that we are bored by it. Newspapers use them as a form of replacement for continuous text, apparently for the attention-starved. Data becomes ever more plentiful by orders of magnitude, and interactive data visualisations ever more powerful. The purposeful, meaningful and ingenious graphic becomes rarer (see www.gapminder.org for an exception). Yet the talent is evident. It’s the purpose that seems absent.

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First published in a slightly modified form ‘Numb and Number’ in Business Standard, 28 April, in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

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