 Hi everyone! Welcome to this episode of Pixel Data Scapes. I'm your host, Hannah Gunderman, and I'm a data, gaming, and popular culture librarian at CMU Libraries. I'm really excited by my role here at the libraries, which is all about using games and popular culture to teach about data and data management principles. Pixel Data Scapes is a place where I can use my love of video games to teach you the viewers about different concepts in data management. There are so many lessons we can learn about data and data management from video games, and today I'm going to be talking about how Hades teaches us the importance of developing strong data management workflows for our research. So sit back, relax, and let's dive in and be aware of minor spoilers ahead for this game. So what is a data management workflow? Well, first let's back up a little bit to data management and what that means. I want you to think about the steps you might use to organize things in your daily life, like your spice rack in your kitchen, your bathroom cabinet, your bookshelf, a video game collection, etc. Are you trying to make things easier to access? Do you want the spaces to look cleaner? Do you want it to be quicker to find the certain items you need? Data management is just applying these same principles of organization to the data that you are producing and using in your research, and making sure that this data is organized, described well, and usable in the future not only for yourself but other people who might reuse your data if that's an option. Different activities that support data management can include using a good file and folder structure when organizing your digital files, having good file names for your data, and writing down detailed documentation about how you are working with your data. So zooming back out now, a workflow for your data management processes is basically a blueprint for how all of these data management techniques will work together to support keeping your research data tidy and organized. As it turns out, the gameplay mechanics of Hades also speak a great deal towards this importance of workflows and considering how different techniques and strategies may work together to support a common goal. Hades was developed by Supergiant Games and first released through Early Access in December 2018. Since then, it has sold over a million copies and continues to be incredibly popular among minigamers including myself for its gameplay, beautiful visuals and music, and compelling narrative. In the game, you play as Zagreus, the son of Hades and prince of the underworld. In his journey to escape the underworld in defiance of his father, Zagreus faces various enemies who are meant to foil his escape attempts and keep him trapped in the house of Hades. During these escape attempts, Zagreus encounters various Olympian gods who offer him boons, upgrades to his abilities which can make his battling style more strategic and effective. These boons can work together in different ways to support that common goal of helping Zagreus escape the underworld. Some of these boons complement each other super well while others are incompatible with each other depending on which ability they support. As you play, you have the opportunity to build an ideal workflow around your escape attempt by mixing and matching these different boons. While combining boons and trying to escape the underworld might seem pretty different from building data management workflows for your research projects, I promise that these two things have more similarities than you think. If you think of Zagreus as escape attempts as metaphors for each research project that you undertake, you are likely going to have to mix and match various data management strategies just like boons to best accomplish the goals of your project. Each of these data management strategies are relevant to one or more portions of the research life cycle, from the early stages where you start planning your project to the end stages where you share the results of your research. The combination of data management techniques that you use for one project may not be the best combination for another project. For example, let's say I have a data management workflow for a research project where I'm conducting geospatial analysis in the software ArcMap. This workflow might include saving my raw data as CSV files, importing them into ArcMap, conducting my geospatial analysis, and exporting the data as shape files, which I then saved to my computer's internal hard drive. This data management workflow would be very successful in keeping my data tidy and organized as I transition that raw data to their secondary form through analysis. However, if I was working on a similar project but with sensitive data that could not be stored on my internal hard drive due to possible ethical risks, I would need to rethink this workflow and include a new strategy for data storage that doesn't involve my computer's hard drive. The best thing you can do at the start of your project is sit down and think through which data management techniques you want to incorporate as you progress throughout your research and how these techniques may fit together as a workflow. And as your project advances, be prepared to rethink that workflow and examine if it's still best supporting your research. In Hades, the player often has the opportunity during escape attempts to replace certain boons they've previously accepted or upgrade their boons for a better performance. This gameplay mechanic not only helps you better understand which boons you prefer to use in your escape attempts and how different boons work together, but it also helps you practice building dynamic workflows for your research projects. So, while you are battling your way out of the underworld, much to the dismay of Hades, you're also practicing your data management skills. It's a win-win situation. Hades is a truly wonderful game that is not only really exciting to play and visually beautiful, but it's also a great way to learn more about building solid data management workflows. I hope this video has been entertaining and helpful for your own research process at CMU. All of us at CMU Libraries are here to support you in your journey in working with data and communicating with data. If you are struggling with creating your own data management workflow for a project, feel free to send us an email at data at cmu.libanswers.com and we'd be so happy to chat and help you develop a game plan. So, until next time, thank you for watching and we'll see you soon.