MAR 2025 | Real World Data for Speculative Souls
Hi there,
My name is Saachi and today is March 31st, which means I’m 11 months into a 12-month sabbatical. If you’re new here, I’m taking a break from work - data viz analytics for a financial institution - to focus on a research and communication design project.
My objectives are to learn about the current sustainability of urban waterfronts and their future potential to address food insecurity at a community level and figure out how to communicate what I learned enjoyably and effectively. Right now I’m using ReactJS to create a short story about a fictional city that has physically changed its waterfront neighbourhood to address a food insecurity emergency.
Photo by Fons Heijnsbroek on Unsplash
This month was split between very different things:
- Figuring out how to present the real-world data and information I’ve collected over the year in my short story
- Coffee chats and learning about ESG
- Making a new ReactJS app to view a Python data analysis
Fiction Based in Reality
“It’s 2039 and WateryTrees is a thriving, if warming, Canadian city sitting on the edge of Lake Ontario. But the city had declared food insecurity an emergency just twenty years prior. Between then and now, the urban waterfront has been changed drastically and now provides a higher, more affordable, quality of life for most. The people are fed and happy. But decay is starting to form. At this uneasy but quiet moment, in a bakery sitting in the middle of the Sponge, memories are recorded over locally made pastries and coffee that is never 100% coffee.” - summary of WateryTrees | The Sponge, 2039 by Saachi Sadcha
Photo by Deborah Downes on Unsplash
By setting this story in the future, I can make sure any potential readers will understand that WateryTrees is speculative fiction, and deliberately fanciful. What’s difficult is making it transparent that the story is rooted firmly in reality. The data are real, the city is very closely modelled on Toronto, and the solutions to food insecurity implemented between 2020 and 2039 are based on community-level solutions and research innovations that exist today. And I need a way to convey this, without forcing the reader out of the immersion or putting reference notes everywhere.
I tried a few things, but my final solution is subtle buttons and collapsible cards between paragraphs.
The image (left or above depending on your device) demonstrates how these collapsible cards would work. When the user taps or hovers over an underlined word, a card opens up in the next paragraph break and then closes when the user taps outside of the card or moves their mouse.
The card includes a short sentence and maybe an image describing the real-world inspiration for phrases like “circular economy”, or “depaved streets”. The card will also include two buttons. The first will be a link to the main source of this information, and the second will be a link to the reference page. The reference page will be like any other citation + supplementary section of a scientific article.
As of right now, I have 30 words/phrases I want to attach cards to, and four data visualizations planned which will also require a card each. What I really like about this solution is that it’s easy to interact with but nearly invisible until the user wants to engage with it. And I think that’s where telling this story in a digital format, along with interactive data viz and 3D models, has a real advantage.
Link: https://2039waterytrees.vercel.app/.
It should work on any device. Just a disclaimer that this is a work in progress because while the story is done, I’m still working on the art and interactive bits.
Chats Continuation and a New App
When I wasn’t working on WateryTrees, I did a few more coffee chats with colleagues and people I met through them. I even reconnected with my PhD professors to find out how they were doing. I won’t go too much into these chats, because they concern other people, but I will say the chats were super lovely, and it just felt really…heart-warming.
The people I spoke with aren’t just intelligent and full of information, but also really kind and super thoughtful. And honestly looking out for what’s best for me. I don’t know if I deserve to be surrounded by so many of these amazing people, but I feel quite lucky and like I need to be handing out cupcakes on a regular basis as thanks.
Image by Saachi Sadcha, made in Blender
During one of these coffee chats, I learned about ESG - Environment, Social, and Governance - in the corporate world. I’d spent all year accidentally learning about ESG-related topics: urban sustainability, food insecurity, and small hyper-local solutions. So I was quite chuffed to learn more about roles that can work within ESG and what sort of skills are required from data scientists/analysts.
Surprisingly, I had experience with all the skills mentioned, and concrete examples like articles, apps, and references for most of them. Except Python. I’m an environmental research scientist turned data viz analyst. Most of my Python experience has been side-of-desk experiments to demonstrate a small point or make charts that were never meant to see the light of day. So I’m familiar enough with Python libraries like Plotly and Pandas and even had some experience using Jupyter Notebooks. But none of that amounts to much since I’m a “show” rather than a “tell” person. It’s just a lot easier for me to talk about skill experience if I have a concrete example to hand over.
So I made one: https://python-0325.vercel.app/.
It took about two days to complete…well… four working days, rather. I have issues leaving my computer when I’m coding and all of a sudden 4 pm turned into 10 pm without me realizing. Twice. But the result is an app that uses data science - statistical tests - and Jupyter Notebook to figure out which meat/protein product has the least impact on the environment. The front end is ReactJS because I wanted to share the notebook results easily, but I used Python libraries to do the data science bit.
All images in this section by Saachi Sadcha, made in Nomad and Procreate on iPad
Of course, I continued to sculpt just for fun. And yeah, I mostly sculpted and painted food like I normally do, but a number of these new sculpts are for WateryTrees specifically. They'll eventually be added to the project as paintings or interactive 3D models.
Next Steps
Talking to more people and making the Python-ReactJS app this month signalled to my brain that it and I were transitioning out of “sabbatical mode”. There’s one more month of this fantastic year left, and honestly, I’m not sure what’s going to happen, future-wise.
I am actively networking and looking for roles, so there’s a non-zero chance that the sabbatical gets cut short and I will start working before the end of April. There’s also a good chance that the end of April will come and go, and I’ll be at the start of a long journey to rejoin the full-time working world.
Either way, it’ll still be months before I finish “WateryTrees | The Sponge, 2039”, so I’m going to continue working on the project. I’ll be sure to post about it on April 30th. Hopefully, I’ll see you back here in a month 🙂
Thank you kindly,
Saachi