Tutu’s View of Data: An Interactive Educational Book Kit about Data
Tutu’s View of Data is an interactive picture book, map, and colored pencil kit that aims to introduce the concept of data to children through a non-intimidating, immersive experience. The project launched from Giorgia Lupi’s picture book This Is Me and Only Me, an illustrated children’s book that promotes data humanism: the idea that data should not be scary, but rather friendly and relatable. Taking Lucy’s interest in data visualization and Peggy’s interest in making for a young audience, we wanted to take a step further from Lupi’s book and make an all-inclusive, captivating experience that connects and resonates with young readers.
To establish a solid foundation in our understanding of data and children’s publications, we began our project through intense research on the diverse types of data, consumption and protection of data, and developmental education, for we believed that even if our research does not get directly addressed in our project, having a robust understanding of our project’s purpose and audience will help us reach the impact and empathy that we are striving for. After our initial research, we agreed to make a big collaged book and map kit with a character that the child can follow throughout their experience. This character developed into Tutu, a curious yellow cockatoo that guides the child through their data journey. Through multiple meetings and discussions, we decided on a narrative where the child will find Tutu’s magical feather that lets them see data hidden in our daily life, then Tutu takes the child to explore and build their own data world. Through a series of shared thumbnails, we had detailed plans of how the collages would look and how the story would build up, hoping to minimize wasting time by fixing the plot and collages later on in the project. This workflow worked very well, allowing us to keep making progress even when we couldn’t meet in person once the general outline of the story had been established.
As the child flips through the book, they explore eight different data regions: Island of Identity, Forest of Favorites, Feeling Fields, Body Bay, Habit Hills, Privacy Peaks, Data Mill, and Plateau of Protection. Using alliteration and word tricks, all explored territories have their own fun concept and color scheme to make the data world come alive. For example, the Birthday Bushes in the Island of Identity grow flowers (with birthday hats and a candle for the filament) that bloom once a year on the child’s birthday, and the Scam Swamps in the Plateau of Protection has phishes that teach the child about phishing scams. The immersion is amplified with Tutu guiding the child to color, cut, and rip pieces from the book and place it into the map, making the map a personalized data landscape when the child finishes the book. We also designed a chunky font used for the title and landmarks, adding a touch of analogue in our typography as well. Using lowercase letters throughout the typeface helped create a more casual and approachable tone, making the book feel less formal and more inviting.
Each page was collaged with pattern swatches we made, resulting in 60 pages after following our sketched thumbnails. We then scanned, photoshopped, and laser-printed our final pages ten by thirteen inches, being big enough for the collages to feel more tactile and tangible. We made hard covers to protect our thick stack of pages, and everything was coil-bound with a pastel-mint coil.
https://vimeo.com/1233418686?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
Throughout this process, our collaboration played an important role. From the beginning, we agreed to be transparent with each other and speak up whenever we disagreed. This made brainstorming more productive and helped us generate many creative ideas while also troubleshooting problems together. Although we were responsible for different parts of the book, we worked closely throughout the whole process so that the final result would feel like one cohesive book rather than two separate visual styles.
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Production required a lot of problem-solving. One unexpected challenge came from the coil binding. Because our covers were made by wrapping paper around a thick chipboard, the folded corners became too thick to fit into the binding punch. We considered several alternatives and eventually decided on the best possible solution: trimming away some of the overlapping paper at the corners and covering the area with an additional layer of paper, which made the book look even more professional. We also had originally planned to print the patterns using a risograph. Although this would have made the production process much more labor-intensive, we liked the handcrafted quality and slight unpredictability of risograph printing, which could also help unify the book through a more consistent color system and natural variations. We did not use a risograph due to the broken machine, but we were still very satisfied with how the colors turned out.
During the critique, we were initially a little concerned that our project might feel too “traditional” compared with some of our peers’ more technology-driven or experimental approaches. However, our guest critic, Denise Korn, reminded us that using a traditional medium was not a weakness and emphasized that the messages throughout the book were powerful. Our peers also described the project as cohesive and well-structured, noting that the interactive elements helped connect the content and made the book feel more engaging as a whole.
Our biggest concern throughout the project was the timeline. The workload was immense, and we had to maintain a high-intensity pace every day, including two all-nighters, to keep everything moving forward. In the end, both our peers and we ourselves were impressed by how much we were able to accomplish within such a limited amount of time. Looking back, even if we had the chance to do it all over again, we would still push ourselves just as hard to bring our original vision to life. From the very beginning, we knew that our ambition would make the project extremely challenging, but we never gave up. Seeing the outcome made all of that effort feel worthwhile.
Overall, this was one of the most challenging projects we have taken on, but it also pushed us to work beyond what we initially thought we were capable of. For future development, we would consider expanding the book into a series, with each edition exploring a different topic for children to learn about. We would also need to further explore how the map could be more practically integrated into the book, especially if we were to move toward actual production or commercialization.
