Beautifully Useless Data

Beautifully Useless Data is a talk about reclaiming curiosity in data visualization. Most of us who work in data visualization operate in high-stakes environments. We document crime to guide intervention. We track climate indicators to influence policy. We build dashboards for compliance, governance, and strategic decision-making. In these contexts, data must justify itself. It must lead to action. It must solve. This talk asks a different question: What happens when we remove the need for action? At its core, this session explores non-transactional data visualization—work that does not optimize, predict, or prescribe, yet still produces meaning. Through two personal projects, I examine how data can deepen perception rather than drive decisions. The first project documents the 8 hours of a World Endurance Championship race in Bahrain. Instead of visualizing lap times or pit strategies, I captured the sky every 20 minutes and extracted its gradient. These gradients were animated sequentially and paired with the top three race leaders at each interval. The result is a temporal artifact: a visual memory of atmosphere and competition coexisting. It offers no strategic insight, but it creates a new way of experiencing the event. The second project maps the spatial dimensions of Finnish lakes during a data visualization course in Finland. Using dimensional data sourced from Jarviwiki and manually drawing the lakes to scale, I constructed a spatial study of surface area and depth. This visualization does not inform environmental policy. Instead, it transforms abstract numerical data into perceivable form, allowing viewers to sense structural relationships and spatial hierarchy. Together, these projects illustrate two modes of “beautifully useless” data: data as atmosphere (time-based, experiential) and data as form (spatial, perceptual). This topic matters to me because my professional practice sits at the intersection of systems and storytelling. I work as a UI/UX designer across apps, websites, and vehicle displays, and have also contributed to environmental CSR initiatives at Hero MotoCorp, along with internal reporting systems. Much of this work is structured, accountable, and outcome-driven. While I value that responsibility deeply, I’ve found that stepping into curiosity-led visualizations—outside compliance and performance metrics—sharpens my sensitivity to patterns, relationships, and unexpected juxtapositions. It expands my creative range in ways that structured outputs alone cannot. Within broader data visualization discourse, this talk connects to ongoing conversations about aesthetics, interpretation, storytelling, and the balance between analytical rigor and creative exploration. As the field matures and increasingly centers impact and accountability, there is also space to discuss play, observation, and perception as legitimate contributions. The structure of the talk follows a clear arc: first, acknowledging the serious responsibilities of professional data work; second, introducing the concept of removing actionability; third, presenting the Bahrain project (time and atmosphere); fourth, presenting the Finland lakes project (space and structure); and finally, synthesizing both into a framework for perception-driven visualization. The intended audience includes data practitioners, analysts, designers, and researchers who primarily create visualization for decision-making contexts. The key takeaway is not that data should abandon impact—but that impact is not the only valid outcome. Visualization can also function as documentation, memory, juxtaposition, and perceptual inquiry. By occasionally allowing data to wander without pressure, we may discover new sensitivities, new forms of seeing, and new creative depth in our serious work. Data can be used like language—sometimes to write a report, and sometimes to write a poem.