 So correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard you like graphs Well, have I got a graph for you So here's a completely made-up graph based off an unscientific survey of two anecdotes. I surveyed myself twice So it's how informed we are versus how much information we have and Obviously the more information we have the less informed we are because now there's too much noise not enough signal too much haystack Not enough needles. We can't know what really matters Here's another graph How connected we are versus how much information we have and again obviously the more information we have the less connected We are because now on the internet and all the media you can find any information to confirm your own biases and beliefs More information is making us more. Here's another another graph. How empowered we are versus let me just skip to the punchline The more you learn the more you realize everything's awful and complex and out of your control and you can't do anything about it So that sucks So I heard you like graphs and you know visualizations and all that I think we're all here because we want to make things and graphics and Interactives that really help people and like give information. We want to make things that help people be more informed more connected more empowered, but if Just putting more and more information out there Accomplishes the complete opposite of all that Then I guess for us media makers and journalists in this new age. The question is not Can our field survive? But does our field deserve to survive and that is our existential crisis But yeah, seriously It is a big problem, but I to be fair it did of us I think already solves a half of that because data visualization lets us go from the individual stories to the larger patterns But I think now we need to go deeper because if what's under those stories are patterns What's under those patterns? our systems Water break one So the problem is we have too much information and not enough Understanding patterns can show us how things happen, but not really why things happen And for that deeper understanding we need systems So we kind of know already what data viz looks like what would system viz So one tool I think might be useful and not the only tool is simulation So here's a prototype and not a prototype a project. I actually launched for once Simulating the world in emoji winky-kissy face Oh, and at the end of this talk, I'll have a link to all my slides and resources and projects So don't worry about all this Anyway, yes, so with this project on the reader could play with simulations made in emoji and they could mess around with the rules and even create their own simulations and these simulations were used to explain systems systems like ecosystems and why forest fires are actually good for the forest or Systems of epidemiology how the seed spreads. What is herd immunity and why is it important? and civil conflict and How much like a forest fire or much like disease of how violence can spread across a population? Now, yes, it's emoji. It's not going to be very complicated. They're obviously very simplified, but that's not a bug That's a feature So think of a street map a street map is Is Useful not despite being simplified, but because it's simplified It cuts away what doesn't matter to just leave what does and that's the issue a lot of things in our Media stuff doesn't matter or at least it gives the false impression like a concrete example turn on your cable news and you'll see some Gnarly nasty gruesome crime story and you probably see them like you know twice a day or more. I should probably lot Yeah, definitely a lot more And you might get the impression and the public opinion in the US right now is that The world and the US is getting more dangerous But if you were to look at beyond the things and look at the trends it turns out that the US crime rates been actually dropping since the 1980s across all categories But the trends only tell you that it's dropping It doesn't tell you why and for that you need to go down beyond the things and the trends to the theory sociology criminology psychology economics, etc. So on and so forth And only once you have theory then can you create a more humane justice system because trends only extrapolate to the future Theories let us create the future. So yeah, that's why we got to go deeper as the inception person says got to go deeper Can we go even deeper than theory? Well, I think yes, there is something fundamental and like underlies all theory Well, I mean other than you know philosophy and math and logic and language and the scientific method itself There's also systems systems thinking. What is systems thinking? I Actually to be honest the systems thinking community doesn't know what systems thinking really is it's kind of it's very Again, I don't think it's a bug might be a feature. Maybe It's very interdisciplinary. So that's why it's kind of why it's like kind of broad and a little bit fuzzy as places But at its core, this is what system thinking is So in our day-to-day lives, we kind of think of cause and effect in a linear fashion a affects to be affects see and So on but the world's not linear. It's loopy According to the world systems thinking where a can affect to be and be can affect a so, you know Stuff like vicious cycles virtuous cycles, you know arms races escalation of violence or kindness beginning more kindness as a positive example And also stabilizing loops that like ecological and economic equilibrium So yeah, the next time you think of a cause and effects don't think about just how a can affect to be but think of any Way that be might be able to directly or indirectly affect a The world's not linear. It's loopy. So that's the core systems thinking so So whenever you want to tell a story yes start with that story that really that human story that human elements that really matters but go beyond the thing and go for the system because it's only once we have a deep understanding of the underlying systems that We can really go where we want to go. Okay. It's still on just making sure What to break to the sequel so but even if we're informed we can still kind of have polarized echo chambers So how do we overcome that because people have Contradicting viewpoints or at least seemingly contradicting viewpoints So I want to show off a simulation that I made about a year and a half ago I think is a good example of how systems thinking can combine contradictions And also, this is my one-hit wonder so people know about this a parallel of the polygons is an explorable explanation about discrimination and diversity So racism and sexism is a polarizing topic especially on the internet Say the least But yeah, so there's kind of two perspectives that well, there's more than two but like one person could say well look at the racial ratio in our incarceration system and the gender pay gap obviously on a societal level there is Huge discrimination But on an individual level a lot of people could say well, I'm not racist with sexist and none of my friends are And besides society has a huge taboo against it. So even if people are a little bit biased, how can it be that bad? Parable of the polygons is a simulation that shows how even a small individual bias Can accumulate through a vicious cycle into a really large societal discrimination so and I'll just play through it And I play through it. I mean pre-recorded video so you can drag around shapes and so each shape So only you can only move the unhappy shapes and shapes on our unhappy It's just moving without me. All right every shape has this rule this individual rule I want to move if less than a third of my neighbors are like me So in the left-hand side The triangle is unhappy because less than a third of his neighbors are like it only one out of six on the middle section It's totally happy because exactly one third of his neighbors like it two out of six and for the right most one It's just meh. It's totally full of its own own peeps So so keep in mind look at the middle section every shape is okay being in the minority in their own local neighborhood So it's a very small bias every one of them would be okay being in the minority and yet and Yet in a larger society So right now I'm just moving around the unhappy shapes Randomly not really thinking just moving them to a random empty spot not really thinking where they're going But that small individual bias Like accumulates it cascades because once Someone moves out of their neighborhood that neighborhood changes and so more people move out of that neighborhood and eventually you get something like This where it started off like totally randomly mixed and now there's definitely Blue section and yellow sections and this is square town. This is triangle town Wow, what is that was up at that? so Yeah, a vicious cycle a loop and that's how You can combine that contradiction where someone could reasonably say there's a huge discrimination on societal level and While someone could reasonably say that for individuals it might not be to be that much and again, I just want to emphasize this is I'm not saying this is how it always works like there are some very top-down discriminatory cases, but I think for at least bottom-up cases. This is how At least is a plausible mechanism for how this kind of Discrimination can arise from the bottom up another thing to emphasize is that It's not just presenting both sides Instead because you know if you just do that then you know confirmation bias people will just take the side that they already believe in What you do instead is to combine both sides not just merely present them show that they can be both Part of the same thing. Let's talk about conflict. I hope you like this illustration of conflict Good illustration. I worked for days on this one It's my masterpiece So a bunch of conflict mediators are actually already using systems thinking to help people resolve conflicts so Here we have like a little toy example of a very basic conflict One person would have a linear cause-and-effect story that they have they attacked us So we're just fighting back and the other side will also have the story. They attacked us. So we're just fighting back But it was not linear. It's loopy Yeah, and in this case, it's pretty common pattern, you know the vicious cycle arms raised the escalation of violence So the conflict mediator uses systems thinking shows it to all the parties involved that The system is their common enemy not each other And maybe once they realize that the system is their common enemy, maybe they can work together at least that's the hope this might be the part where I dropped the word empathy and I want to say I really like I really like empathy. I've made stories and games for empathy kind of a buzzword nowadays not like synergy bad, but Kind of kind of getting kind of out where gamification is. That's where empathy kind of is I can see the tweets now Nikki hates empathy Thank you But I think but really like yeah, I'm fighting with individuals is important, but she's thinking about systems individual, I mean they matter, but not as much as the system itself So the empathy is too individual. It's important, you know, you had to start with the individual but you also got to look at the system and So if information is making us feel more polarized more disconnected then what system thinking tells us Is that we're all connected? It's kind of a cliche, but we're all connected whether or not we like it and whether or not those connections are healthy a Lot of the time. They're not healthy, but in that case the system is our common enemy Not the individuals Water break three from the creators of water break one and water break two So even if we're informed and connected we can still feel this empowered you can say well now I am very informed about the system and I know we're all in this together and we're trapped this sucks What can we do and uh, I don't know. I really hoped I would be able to figure this out by the time I was scheduled to give this talk, but um Given how people have been like dealing with political philosophers have been dealing with this problem for like millennia I guess I guess it's just a thing we'll have to keep thinking about forever How can people like average daily, you know your average citizen Feeling empowered or like actually make a change still figuring out But I think I have some like partial half-baked ideas that I'll show off in this prototype, which is not out and also, I yes the UI is a little bit bad, but prototype just rough ideas So it's a simulation of the school-of-prison pipeline is using us statistics So it's got six boxes and people move from box to box So students at the top employ unemployed in the middle and incarcerated at the bottom Uh, and so they move probabilistically And the probabilities are based off the actual stats on race age education income Employment and incarceration at least for the US and They move around probabilistically based on those stats and you can also like Ask you can change those stats in the sidebar to ask what if what if fewer juveniles when incarcerated what if employment prospects were better and Each box is also separated and each like the parts of the sidebar are also separated by box So you can say like if you're a small business owner you get the little box Where you control the probabilities of who gets employed like what do you want to hire ex cons or how do you want to Increase the job prospects. How often do you have to fire or lay people off? So not only do you get asked what if you can also ask What can I or people like me can do and how would that affect the entire system? And so here it is just running simulations probabilities using the real stats from the bureau just Using real stats and you can also focus on an individual story so you can click on someone and you can see the individual story and the system at the same time and So as it runs you can also think like oh, I'm a I'm a teacher What if I help people more people go to college or must I'm a small business owner? What if I didn't discriminate against ex cons or? I'm a policy maker. What if I were to get rid of mandatory minimums or at least reduce them and in a prototype you can't really see how it affects the entire system, but The idea hopefully once this is done is that you'll be able to see what small change you can do in your field And how that ripples out throughout the entire system? So that's an idea for maybe how system thinking can help us be more empowered maybe Just kind of my thought of why people might feel disempowered and it's pretty I'll say it's like a pretty legitimate reason. I think it comes from having a linear story Believing that Power comes from one party controlling another coming controlling another and crap rose downhill and things are terrible So, you know, they are like, you know at a very top there's the corporations or the government and they control the media or the middlemen who control a very easily manipulated majority and If you're not at the root cause and on a linear cause-and-effect story, there's only one root cause If you're not a root cause if you're not at the very top, then you have no power and you can't really do anything And that's a very disempowering Story and idea But the world's not linear it's thank you and when the world is loopy there is no root cause Because and I would and that's great. That means any part of the system where you at where you are at Your effects through feedback loops to vicious cycles, virtual cycles stagnating and stabilizing loops Your effects can ripple throughout the entire system Just like much just a lot like how empowered the polygons showed how Even a very small bias or effect in a local neighborhood Can ripple out throughout the entire world Maybe That's how systems thinking can empower us maybe as a more concrete example for example your small business owner and you want to hire X cons and It turns out that it works pretty well and your peers your network in your business community also decides to hire ex-cons for themselves and But the ex-cons also have their own, you know, their own network their own friends mostly people in poor disadvantage neighborhoods communities of color and So they reach out to their network and it just keeps spreading and public opinion shifts on race and criminal justice and Public opinion then turns into public pressure on politicians to fix their stuff and That is a lot much easier than said and done but Again, these are all like half-baked ideas and I'm still figuring this out And I hope some may all will join on figuring out systems thinking and stuff like that as the old saying joke goes You're not stuck in traffic. You are traffic and What systems thinking tells us we are not trapped in the system. We are the system Waterbreak for what to break origins hydrates harder Anyway, and that is how we could use systems thinking to give us a deeper understanding to overcome polarization and maybe just maybe We can change the world So what? Because I just gave you a whole bunch of theory and not a lot is actually practical You might be saying Nicky. I got deadlines after this conference. I gotta learn D3. I'm only up to D2 What you got for me? Well, I'm glad you asked said hypothetical person so here are five tools I'm gonna give you on how to tell stories about systems and turn systems into stories and Again, all the links and projects I will be referring to will be posted at the end of this slide talkie thing so five tools from least cray-cray to implement to most cray-cray to implement and the first tool is Nothing or at least nothing new so, you know You don't have to change your workflow your tools because people have been telling stories about systems in all kinds of media So here are three of my favorite examples the wire is the quintessential example with its ensemble cast multiple perspectives and You know every season is showing a different part of the system a different part of the Baltimore criminal justice system So yeah, if you make a video or you know film stuff like check out the wire That's how you that is how you do storytelling about systems The other two aren't really about systems, but there's still really great ways to do Storytelling from multiple perspectives and in a non-linear way So for those of you who make infographics heard you like graphs Chris where check out the work of Chris where and specifically his graphic novel building stories. It's It's like 12. It's an anthology of like 12 different stories that can be read in any any order and each installment I guess is So non-linear has multiple perspectives time and intersecting with each other all which way what so that's really how you can do a Non-linear storytelling in a visual format using the grammar of comics or something and then there is is quote-unquote post-modern literature like one of my favorite books Kurt Vonnegut's breakfast of champions where it switches from character character timeline to timeline And also not not pictured here, but another one that I read recently and really like Jennifer Egan's a visit from the Goon Squad and both of these postmodern literatures a way of doing multiple perspectives and Non-linear storytelling so the point is you don't need simulations or anything fancy To tell stories about systems because people have been doing it out of media not very common actually pretty rare So but it has been done to number two is the causal loop diagram And I've actually been doing this the entire talk So Causal loop diagram is yeah AFXB and so on so here's my favorite example that I found randomly through Google and research So it's about the war on drugs specifically on Focusing on heroin and so I really like this one because with just three loops it tells three Really deep stories. So the first causal loop is about how if we sees heroin Yes, it reduces it in the short run, but a reduction in inventory You know supply and demand reducing inventory drives up the price driving up the price drives up profits and driving up profits Drives up the incentive to create more heroin. So that's the first loop second loop is if the price goes up addicts You know the demand can't fall. They're addicted to it They have to resort to a petty crime to you know to petty crime which results in a rest, you know, so that's our burgeoning incarceration system there And with arresting addicts that means less heroin is used which means the inventory goes up And that brings us to the third loop where if there is leftover inventory The drug dealers will have to market it so to speak and building bring in more new addicts into the system So three completely different stories like this is the content of like three documentaries and it's captured in one diagram I really like I really like the causal loop diagram But if you ever do a Google image search on this, they all look this bad Like apparently the systems thinking community doesn't realize it's more than one font than Times New Roman And more than one shade of blue than hex code 000 ff So please if you're a visual designer and you want to use powerful two of causal loop diagrams Please oh my gosh make this better because it looks horrible. Even if it's powerful. Oh my eyes are bleeding tool number three Water break five water returns Stock inflow model oops stock inflow models. So a stock inflow Imagine a stock as a bathtub and you know things flow in things flow out. That's a stock inflow model It's kind of similar to the causal loop diagram So this one is the here's where simulation actually comes in stock inflow models are specifically created for simulation And when I was like researching on stock inflow models, it turns out the earliest simulation Was not done on an electronic computer. It was done on a water computer. This is a computer made of water What? So instead of electricity flowing through wires We have water flowing through pipes and this was created in 1949 by some New Zealand person to Simulate the economy and so, you know, it's like one box one tank is the Treasury money flows in money flows out And it worked pretty well. I mean it worked well enough to get a place in a museum. So good for you 1949 New Zealand person But yeah, people still use stock inflow simulations today You know climate scientists use it to model greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere and greenhouse gases being taken out More greenhouse gases are going in and coming out obviously But and also like also simulating economies people see use stock inflow for that and also like Modeling disease basically you can use stock inflow simulations to simulate anything where you have a thing and Things go into the thing and things come out of the thing. It's a pretty flexible tool to use and Tool number four is Probability simulations And this one's actually used to buy a lot data visualizes already and these are examples that a lot of you might already know So first one is Nathan yas Years you have left to lift comma probably Where using the real CDC data he simulates people being born and dying Over and over again, and you get a nice little histogram of death over there And I can tell you how many years you have left to live probably the second one is The one that actually really inspired my prototype The Marsha project made the Marsha project with in collaboration with 538 made the parole simulator Where you can choose the trade-off you can choose at what cut-off risk people get parole or don't get parole and You can make that trade-off for yourself and see how it works probabilistically The third one with the goats and the car that is actually a pretty infamous mathematical paradox So this one is created by this simulation was created by Victor Powell as an explainer of the Monty Hall paradox and finally It's election season Martin Lombresht Made rock and pole which great title which shows off why a 2% chance a 2% Tell difference in the polling results isn't that much to analyze about because that is the margin of error So he made a simulation Explaining margin of error and again, I will have a link to all the links to all this and at the very far Theoretical and we have agent-based modeling also similar is cellular automata, but let's not agent-based modeling So an agent is a thing that makes decisions and an agent-based model is a whole bunch of things a whole bunch of agents that make Decisions based off of others decisions. So that's like infinite feedback loops there. It's also loopy So for example, it's concrete example parallel polygons is an agent-based model parallel polygons was actually I stole a An agent-based model created by Thomas Schelling a Nobel Prize-winning economist He's the one who created the original model of I heart and I just added cute shapes and smiles to it to explain in such a cute way segregation. What a cute topic But you don't have to do just grids you can also do a network and Yeah, great. Yeah grids and networks all that and the CDC also uses agent-based models to simulate Disease spread and how to combat disease in real time. So simulations save lives So now that you know the theory and the tools and I realize I have a minute left How to simulate the universe and 134 easy steps? Step one pick a thing pick a story because you need you need that human elements You need a human hook But go beyond that and step two find the trends and step three go beyond that and find the theory Don't you don't need to be an expert on everything? But just like Learn enough to get to step four Find the non-linear loopy causes and effects the vicious and virtual cycles And once you have that step five pick a tool you don't need to get super complicated Just pick the tool that works for you and once you have a prototype step six It's a rate in step seven. It's a rate in step eight. It's rate And you just kind of keep doing this as well and over and over again until you have something that really inform People something that really connects people something that really empowers people and once you've made something that does all that step 134 ship it It's that 135 fixed bugs. All right. Thank you so much links over there