Metaphors in Organization
I ORGANIZED ROCKS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND HOW
WE UNDERSTAND THE WORLD
This project was one of the two major projects associated with my thesis, Breaking the Bar Chart: Why Chart Types Are Holding Us Back and How Metaphors Can Help. The thesis presents a process for visualizing data that focuses on the act of organizing and transforming metaphorical entities.
The project presented here—which resulted in both a book and gallery exhibition—focused specifically on the metaphors we use to organize these entities (e.g., family relationships). The premise was simple: by reorganizing actual entities—rocks found on the beach—what can we learn about our methods of organization, the metaphors that govern them, and how that affects our understanding of the world?
By applying different metaphors, we can create new organizational structures. These new organizational structures are models—or visualization forms—that either hide or reveal relationships between the rocks. By simply applying new metaphors, we learn something new about the things we are organizing.
THE BOOK
THE EXHIBITION
