Designing Data Fluencies (IDDV Talks Vancouver #7)
🌟 Join us for IDDV Talks, #7 – Designing Data Fluencies!
Explore the exciting intersection of design, data, and imagination with Gillian Russell and Jihyun Park, two brilliant researchers from the Imaginative Methods Lab. This talk is perfect for anyone curious about how design can shape a brighter future.
💬 About the Talk
This talk presents two recent projects from the Imaginative Methods Lab that investigate how aesthetic, affect-driven, and participatory interventions can reframe data as a catalyst for critical engagement, reflexivity, and collective sense-making.
Grounded in Critical Data Studies and Speculative Design, we examine how speculative design methodologies can activate new imaginaries and expand the role of data beyond representation—toward practices that foster dialogue, ethical inquiry, and transformative possibility.
By centering playful and participatory approaches, we consider how everyday engagements with data can contribute to crafting more just and livable worlds. 🌍✨
📅 Agenda
5:00–5:30 PM: Arrivals, pizza, and mingling 🍕
5:30–7:00 PM: Talks and Q&A 🎤
7:00 PM–Close: Networking 🤝
🎤 Meet Our Speakers
Gillian Russell
Gillian Russell is an Assistant Professor in design at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Vancouver, Canada. Working at the intersection of critical design, futures literacies, and narrative environments, her practice explores how design can be used as a method for exposing the entangled complexity of technology, culture and environment, and open up space for new pathways towards more socially just and sustainable futures.
Dr. Russell is co-director of the Imaginative Methods Lab, an innovation hub for the development of research methods and tools to foster critical and co-creative transformational futures, and an affiliate at the Digital Democracies Institute where she researches creative approaches to Data Fluencies.
Jihyun Park
Jihyun Park is an information designer and researcher pursuing a PhD at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology while also teaching at Northeastern and Emily Carr University. Her research explores co-speculative design and social practices, using data practice and visualization to engage communities in collectively envisioning sustainable, ecologically healthier futures. As a researcher and designer with the Imaginative Methods Lab, she fosters deeper, more democratic forms of imagination through collaborative citizen-engaged data practices, developing creative tools and strategies to navigate crises and drive eco-social transformations.
✨ Who should join?
Designers passionate about the intersection of aesthetics, creativity, and data.
Data Visualization Enthusiasts eager to explore innovative ways to represent and interact with data.
Professionals and Students looking to meet like-minded individuals and build meaningful connections in the design and data community.
🎟 Spots are limited! Register now!
** In accordance with Northeastern's new policy, we are required to verify the ID of external guests. Please remember to bring a valid photo ID to the event.