Data visualization is so much more than pie charts, tables and diagrams. It’s art, math, psychology, and the study of information interpretation. USC Iovine and Young Academy alumna Racquel Fygenson is on a quest to present complex data in the most fascinating, usable, and intelligible way possible. So much so that she decided to make it her life’s (well, life so far) work. 

Currently a PhD student in the Computer Science department at Northeastern University concentrating on data visualization, Fygenson accepts the challenge of optimizing the way people perceive data. To put it simply, making facts and figures more accessible is her PhD focus  – an ambition she’s been pursuing since she was an IYA freshman. 

“There’s something so magical about telling somebody something, and then they get it,” she adds, recalling the thrill of  her high school tutoring days. Fygenson has been working at capturing that magic throughout her academic career. 

Fygenson initially dipped her toe in the world of “data vis” at IYA, taking a core course that made an indelible mark on her professional trajectory. She gravitated towards the field’s multifaceted elements and the collegial puzzle of transforming knowledge into absorbable imagery. 

“Visualization has the mathematical and analytical components, it has the building components, the programming. Setting up your data pipeline. And then there’s the visual and design components,” Fygenson explains. “I find it to be a very compelling intersection of all these things, which is what IYA is all about.” 

After graduation, Fygenson gave a hedge fund job a chance and freelanced as a designer, but knew her heart was in data visualization. The PhD track is a long and demanding one – a path even her academia-entrenched parents even advised her against – but she knew she could make an impact in that world. As a student today, she’s able to devote all of her time to her passion, conducting research that explores how people take in what they see and how they see it. With that awareness in her arsenal, she can develop methods that improve the data visualization process. 

“Now that I’ve started to do more research, we are looking at questions beyond accessibility and into how do visualizations manipulate readers regardless of intent,” she says.

With accessibility in mind, Fygenson collaborates with psychologists to consider factors like risk, trust, and bias when evaluating perception and cognition in the data visualization system. These contextual circumstances all affect how data’s display can manipulate your viewpoint and your judgment.

The study of data visualization can encompass everything from examining how well people understand personal health data to improving human interaction with machine learning models – both examples of projects Fygenson has worked on. Last summer, she interned at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). In addition to building a licensed tool that optimized data collection via drones on Mars, one task involved distilling intelligence from a satellite circling the earth analyzing river flow.

“All of a sudden we could get a lot more data on river flow and that has tons of geopolitical implications like pollution or safety responses to floods. We were presented with so much more data than they ever had so it was fun to try to condense it down into a tool, so that somebody could actually get information from all of these numbers," she shares. 

Images courtesy of NASA, JPL-Caltech, ArtCenter, the Data to Discovery Program, and the JPL Hydrology and Simultaneous Localization and MappingTeams.
This work originated from the 2022 JPL-Caltech-ArtCenter Data to Discovery Program.
The research was carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).
Authors include: Racquel Fygenson, Isabel Li, and Alex Lim. In collaboration with:  Cédric David, Robert G Deen, Mauricio A Hess Flores, and Francois Ayoub.
Under the mentorship of: Scott  Davidoff, JPL/NASA, Maggie Hendrie, ArtCenter, Hillary Mushkin, Caltech, and Santiago Lombeyda, Caltech + ArtCenter

Fygenson’s work already has clear real-world (and, even real-space) influence, and she thanks her time at IYA for exposing her to data visualization in the first place. A self-proclaimed rule-follower who felt uncomfortable in uncertainty, she admits the school helped her figure out what she wanted to do – not what she felt she needed to do. It gave her courage to stand by her interests, welcome failure, and present her ideas with conviction. 

“I’m here doing my PhD because I want to sit and think about visualization for a very long time. I get to think about what I want to think about,” says Fygenson. “I know from my experiences in IYA, if that changes and I’m no longer getting what I want from this project, I have power. I have abilities. I’m able to think critically. I’m able to do good. I’m able to work well and bring value to different situations. And that type of confidence is one of the most beautiful safety nets I’ve ever had.”

As she continues to pursue her PhD, one thing Fygenson hasn’t mapped out is her exact future. From both an academic and industry perspective, she appreciates two sides of data visualization – the artistic and the analytical. She shares that she loves making more bespoke visualizations and can see herself starting a consultancy where she can use her education to express data she truly cares about. 

“If I get to spread information that I think is important, I think that would be a beautiful thing.” 

What is data visualization? It's so much more than graphs and pie charts. As a PhD student in data visualization, IYA alum Racquel Fygenson is deeply devoted to studying the way people perceive information. Appreciating both the artistic and analytical sides of "data vis," she's on a quest to present data in the most fascinating, usable, and intelligible way possible.

Devoted to Data: Mastering the Art of Visualization