Inspired by Wagashi, the traditional Japanese confection art regarded as a microcosm of time, space and nature, DataWagashi is a new medium aiming to make climate data tangible, accessible and fun by blending taste, smell, touch, texture, and physical interaction into the vocabulary of data communication.

The DataWagashi project was conceived in response to a growing need to raise awareness about environmental issues. These global crises often seem overwhelming and distant, detached from the realm of our immediate senses. Our project aims to bridge that gap by bringing ecological data into a more intimate, approachable, and even palatable sphere.

Starting with the question, "How might we create tangible experiences around climate data by engaging senses beyond the visual?", the project elevates traditional data visualization by incorporating sensorial and interactive elements into the mix. It pushes the boundary of data storytelling by transcending data from a purely visual medium to a multisensory experience.

Imagine tasting the rising carbon footprints of different foods by sampling the escalating bitterness in a set of DataWagashi pieces, or sensing the retreat of icebergs by nibbling on a series of pieces with shrinking honeydew filling. Using the familiar and enjoyable medium of food to represent pressing environmental data, this unique approach fosters emotional engagement and empathy towards these critical messages. By blending Wagashi - a time-honored craft celebrating seasons and nature - with contemporary technology, DataWagashi infuses a distinctive aesthetic and philosophical depth to data representation, encapsulating the narrative coherence and experiential delight to create collective moments around climate awareness.

Our process involves a custom pipeline that integrates data analysis, data-driven climate narrative building, digital algorithmic prototyping, physical prototyping, and experience design. This unique process is central to creating simple, rigorous and delightful DataWagashi experiences. It expands the edges of using experimental mediums in data communication, where the synthesis of food attributes and data yields a vivid and more profound communication of insights and messages. By effectively blending digital data points with sweet recipes, it balances data representation and edibility, and creatively represents environmental narratives through a comprehensive multisensory experience.

With DataWagashi, we seek to influence narratives and inspire thought leaders, educators, influencers and future makers in how they approach storytelling of complex data. Having already sparked numerous productive conversations about innovative data representation and multisensory techniques by sharing the DataWagashi experience with diverse public audiences, we look forward to building more connections through this idea, and seeing more people inspired by this approach and incorporate it into their own practices.

Picture this: You walk into your favorite coffee shop, check out the desserts, and choose which one to order based on its carbon footprint—just by looking at the confection itself.

Wagashi is a traditional Japanese dessert considered to embody a microcosm of time, space, and nature through rich flavor, color and form. In this coffee shop, each dessert features a main ingredient—berries, citrus, chocolate—that determines its primary flavor, with an added twist: the addition of a layer of coffee, which corresponds to the carbon footprint associated with producing this main ingredient. The higher the carbon footprint, the higher the level of coffee in the dessert, and the more bitter it tastes. You can see and taste it.

Making Data Feel Real

This is the concept behind DataWagashi, the design-tech project by multidisciplinary designer Tiange Wang and design technologist Iyang Huang. DataWagashi invites people to experience the future of data communication by bringing climate data to life through all the senses. We go beyond traditional visuals by incorporating taste, smell, texture, and physical interaction, expanding the vocabulary for how we understand and interact with data. With DataWagashi, data transforms from numbers on a screen to a vivid and engaging multisensory journey.

Fighting Data Fatigue

In today's world, the constant doom and gloom surrounding climate change can make it feel overwhelming and disconnected from our daily lives. The complexity of climate data, which is often presented through numbers, charts, and preaching, only adds to this detachment, making the information hard to relate to our senses and emotions. We wanted to find a new, better way to raise awareness about these important issues, and make data communication more intuitive, enjoyable, and fun. So we turned to food, a universally-loved and relatable medium, to make complex environmental data more accessible, foster empathy, and empower people to make better choices. But food is just one of many creative media we can use to overcome data fatigue and craft engaging data stories through design.

One way we can think about changing how we present information is by transforming text-based information into something capable of carrying multimodal information—like edible objects, but also, sounds, lights, responsive wearables, and much more. Instead of just making a deck that tells people there has been a 20-degree sea water temperature increase, why not design a way for people to directly feel the difference? Imagine experiencing wildfires not through statistics, but by tasting the severity of raging flames through a range of spicy dishes, hearing the before and after of dwindling forest chorus, and touching the roughness of the scorched grass. By physicalizing data, we translate numbers back into experiences that can be seen, touched, and felt, connecting more deeply with the real world.

This approach opens up various real-world use cases and applications in everyday lives, from creating customized dessert recipes and generating climate sonatas to sending personalized gift packages.

The importance of data empathy

DataWagashi is also about democratizing data. By turning data into physical, sensory experiences, we can break down information barriers, ensuring that people with varying data literacy levels can grasp the complex concepts and join in on conversations about climate change and environmental impact. This redesign of data presentation fosters understanding among diverse groups across ages, cultures, and professional training, creating a fair environment for dialogue and learning, and making the intricate world of data an experience open to all.

Soon, you might walk into your favorite cafe and order desserts not by ingredients, but by picking up a menu called "Biodiversity Forecast in 60 years," and choosing from "Rainforest," "Desert," or "Ocean." Maybe you'll have a weekly smoothie subscription that alters its formula based on a synthesis of the average air quality (climate data) and how active you are (personal health tracking data). The next day, a box of unique foods arrives, driven by your data choices, offering delightful surprises. This not only gives you a tasty treat but also connects you to a bigger data story, inspiring awareness and action.

The impact of the project

The impact of DataWagashi has been multifaceted, as the project continues to inspire change, creativity, education, and engagement on multiple levels and scales globally.

In the past year, DataWagashi has captivated 300k+ impressions across online and in-person platforms. Our presence has been highlighted through invited talks, workshops, exhibitions, and tastings at Boston Design Week, NYCxDesign Festival, San Francisco Design Week, Cambridge Science Festival, MIT Museum, London Design Festival, Harvard University, Northeastern University, New Balance and SXSW – where we were among the most popular and anticipated sessions. Through these engagements, DataWagashi has opened up an opportunity for us to rethink how we can describe data-driven climate issues. By moving beyond the uninspiring conventional methods of infographics, it has expanded the horizon of data experience, prompted public participatory learning, and sparked greater interest towards the subject matters represented, curing the anxiety and fatigue of data preaching.

The past year has also seen a deep commitment to community engagement with this project, bringing people together to discuss and reflect on environmental issues in a more interpersonal, delicious, and lasting way. Among those who have experienced, interacted and designed data-driven Wagashi pieces with us, there were kids, elderlies, the sensory-impaired, chefs, teachers, scientists, designers, and many more. During our live presentation and tasting event at Boston Design Week in the Amazon lobby, we observed a lot of enthusiasm to photograph the Wagashi for sharing and social media posting. The spontaneous promotion from our attendees proves that the right medium can harness people's genuine interest and leverage the social media impact for better climate understanding and a greener future.

What we have heard

By breathing new life into traditional craft with contemporary technology, the project has promoted cultural appreciation and inspired artists and designers to explore data experientialization in their work, nurturing an extended genre of creative work that is both informative and sensory. Here is one of our favorite quotes captured from the audiences: "One of the few experimental design projects I've seen that balance the subjective (e.g. personal associations with certain flavors, smells, colors, forms) and the objective/quantitative (climate data, geological data, etc). Often experimentation in design can diverge (becoming too open ended and unrelatable) or converges and becomes rigid, leaving no room for inspiration and imagination. In other words, the creators avoided getting lost in the creative sauce as well as analysis paralysis." (Majed Bou G.)

What's next

We are excited to advance all the efforts above through several upcoming milestones. Our forthcoming Generative-AI powered app, DiGiWAGASHi, whose beta version was showcased at SXSW, digitizes the DataWagashi experience, offering users the ability to access recipes, ingredient kits, and ordering DataWagashi pieces through a unique data story menu. It also enables users to input or upload their data of interest to personalize the experience, ask questions, and discover insights from AI about the data story, the detailed explanations of the DataWagashi pieces, and instructions on how to make them. This experimental app is a provocation for bringing climate awareness efforts into consumer products, blending climate messages with engaging and marketable experience, and amplifying the reach by open sourcing this idea.

We are also collaborating with an experimental kitchen to start a new "InforMeal" series and scale our ability to design and offer multisensory data experience with even more mediums. We look forward to publishing this work – including case studies, recipes, menu samples and research – in an omnichannel volume to engage global subscribers.

With these developments, DataWagashi is set to further strengthen its presence across various design, climate, science, and education platforms, inspire innovations in data communication, and foster awareness and actions on important climate issues.

More details about this project can be found on https://www.datawagashi.com/