A day in the life of a Data & UI designer
Hello, My name is Sakina Salem and I am a digitaldesigner from Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania. I work as a data visualisation designer at Code For Africa (CFA), an organisation that empowers citizens with actionable information using media and technology.
I would like to use this platform to present the challenges we face at CFA and solutions I found using different tools. I hope the articles are informative and create a safe space for conversation so that we may all learn something new about the principles of data visualisation.
The tools
As a graphic designer, my weapon of choice is almost always the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. While there is a lot of flexibility in using Adobe Illustrator to create data visualisations, it can be time-consuming for articles that are on tight deadlines.
I have also had some success with Adobe After Effects which I used to create motion graphics in articles such as Sucked Dry and this video article about the Ugandan expressway, both by Infonile. It is, however, much more difficult and time-consuming to use than Adobe Illustrator.
A platform we use extensively at Code for Africa is Flourish.Studio. What we lose in flexibility, we gain in responsiveness and ease of use. Flourish.Studio offers a plethora of charts, visualisations and maps to choose from and a storytelling feature too. I have trained many journalists on how to use Flourish.Studio to present data and satellite imagery.
We have used Google earth and google timelapse to great effect also. These tools are particularly useful in articles about deforestation or land grabbing. A relatively new product is Google Earth Studio which I used in Oxpecker’s Conservation Capture.
While the software is essential to the end product, I firmly believe that it is creativity and understanding of data that leads the way.
Let’s begin!
