Water Consumption

Environment Awareness

Merging Data Physicalisation and Visualisation to Cultivate Water Conservation Awareness and Engagement

left:collage of lego people with constructed props made with lego, taking a shower, washing hands, with a washing machine, sitting on the toliet, with blocks of lego as bar charts with data annotation, right: collage of kid drawings, underwater scene of ocean creatures with blocks of water made digitally flowing down through other drawings of an open tap with running water, person sitting on a toilet, person showering, two people taking clothes out of waching machine and washing line with clothes above, down to large block of water with data annotation

(These projects were longlisted in Information is Beautiful 2022 awards)

Teaching Water Conservation

A personal project based on the very long showers my kids take. I wanted a way to explain to them how important water is and should be used sparingly but in a very simplified way that they could relate, understand and empathise with, so some elements and concepts might not be completely accurate. I was inspired by a lot of the data comics and wanted to make something that had a similar feel.

Exploring Water Usage from Everyday Scenarios

I asked them to think about the ways they used water at home and together we narrowed it down to four scenarios:

I asked them how many times or how long they think they did each activity, and we wrote it down. With laundry it was the amount of clothes they would wash a week and converted roughly into the load per day.

Choosing Favourite Mediums for Learning and Engagement

Tiago was 6 years old and interested in Lego so he made the four scenarios with blocks parts all by himself. I helped with stacking the blocks at the end to make it bar chart like, photographed each piece and compiled them in Photoshop with his help adding text and numbers.

Silvia was 4 years old. She was the one in our household that took the longest showers, used the most clothes at the time so I had to think of a way for her to understand the impact of excess water use. I told her the water came from the sea and if she used too much, the animals in the sea would not have enough water to live and play in. She was very interested in drawing so I asked her to draw the four scenarios and the sea which she did independently. I photographed the drawings and put them together in Photoshop, placed the sea drawing at the top and added some blocks of blue shades to depict water flowing from the sea into the home. I added the text and numbers.

left:collage of lego people with constructed props made with lego, taking a shower, washing hands, with a washing machine, sitting on the toliet, with blocks of lego as bar charts with data annotation, right: collage of kid drawings, underwater scene of ocean creatures with blocks of water made digitally flowing down through other drawings of an open tap with running water, person sitting on a toilet, person showering, two people taking clothes out of waching machine and washing line with clothes above, down to large block of water with data annotation
Left: Collage of scenarios, bar charts with lego and annotations. Right: Collage of drawing the scenarios with annotation

Short-Lived Success

The showers after were incredibly quick and it became a bit of a race on who could have the shortest ones but unfortunately after a few weeks they didn’t seem to care much anymore and reverted back. But I hope they will hold the memory of this project we did together and grow to understand and appreciate the value of water better as they grow older.