Seven Decades in Three Inches: Designing Data as Belonging

How do you tell a seven-decade story on a 3-inch magnet?

This talk explores how the metaphor of tree rings became the foundation for translating 60+ years of alumni history into a tangible artifact. What began as a keepsake for 150+ alumni evolved into a deeper design investigation: how can data be transformed into physical form in a way that fosters identity, and belonging?

At its core, this project represents a shift in perspective from visualization as something viewed on a screen to visualization as something held, gifted, and remembered. The tree ring metaphor became the organizing framework or translating decades of alumni history. Institutional identity informed the visual language, while the constraint of a 3-inch surface demanded clarity, and intentional abstraction.

This topic matters deeply to me because my professional work in cybersecurity focuses on designing large-scale, high-stakes visualization systems. In contrast, this project asked: what changes when data is designed to be held instead of viewed? The turning point came when an alumnus shared that his father, a forest officer, used to bring home logs and ask him to count the rings. Seeing the magnet brought those memories back. That moment revealed something powerful: when visualization connects to lived experience, it becomes immersive and human

This talk contributes to conversations in data visualization around craft, materiality, and community-centered design. It expands the field beyond screens and tools into physical artifacts and social infrastructure, demonstrating how metaphor can drive design decisions not just aesthetics.

The presentation will unfold in five parts:

The Design Challenge: Encoding time, identity, and institutional memory within a fixed 3-inch surface. What do you include? What do you remove? Metaphor as Structure: How the tree ring metaphor became the organizing framework. From Artifact to Belonging: Community response, including the forest officer story, illustrates how data becomes meaningful when it connects to lived experience. A Framework for Designing Data as Belonging: Conclude by distilling the process into a reusable framework for translating data into tangible artifacts focusing on metaphor-driven structure, designing under constraint, encoding identity over explanation.

This talk is intended for designers, visualization practitioners, crafters, and anyone interested in expanding what visualization can be.

Key takeaways include:

• A framework for translating metaphor into structure.
• Insights into creating visualization artifacts that foster belonging.
• What becomes possible when data is designed to be held?