Holding true to their original mission
The original aim of Simpleinfo was “to use design to close information gaps and foster communication.”
In his junior year of college, Sasha Chang, who was an urban planning major, posted a detailed note on his Facebook about the urban redevelopment project displacing the Wang families in Taipei’s Shilin District. In the note he used simple language to explain the controversy surrounding the government’s appropriation and development of the Wenlin Yuan properties. Later Chang joined the “ Info2act” information visualization team and met Stanley Wang, an international business major. They discovered that they were very much on the same wavelength and decided to form their own team to fight vicious cycles of misinformation.
They recruited a bunch of friends with similar ambitions. The team of four expanded to a team of 24, including members who had studied or gained expertise in the realms of animation, information engineering, nursing, Chinese, political science, law, biomedicine and public health and who were eager to incite revolution with their keyboards.
How do you start a revolution with information design?
“Increasing the efficiency with which information is disseminated” is the goal of information design, and work in the field is divided among information architects, marketing planners, visual designers, and illustrators, who collectively package information into interesting and easily digestible content that reveals the many sides of an issue and allows the general public to see every side’s point of view. After all, understanding is the beginning of communication, and without it there is no possibility of change.
Take the subject of random killings, for which Simpleinfo created the infographic “The Art of Emergency Self-Defense on the Metro: Let’s Talk About Random Killings.” From the planning stage, the team was extremely careful about what angles to take in the infographic. From personal self-defense, it moved into a discussion about the causes of these incidents before clearly explaining that this is a case where “prevention is better than cure.” Moreover, the infographic looked at measures adopted in Japan, the United States, Norway and other countries. It left no stone unturned, but it didn’t try to provide definitive answers to all the questions it raised. It let readers come to their own conclusions.
The infographic was first released online after the 2014 Taipei MRT attack by Cheng Chieh and then was reposted shortly after the beheading of the young girl in Neihu early this year. In the week after its reposting, it had 1.4 million hits and 14,000 Facebook shares. It generated warm feedback and passionate discussion on Facebook, thus realizing Simpleinfo’s aim of using infographics to generate discussion in society.
Simpleinfo has helped with fundraising for the Advanced Rocket Research Center. The potential for creating industrial transformation was clearly laid out in this infographic.