Material Data: Visualizing Information

DESIGN CHALLENGE

Our challenge was to design a participatory installation that explores life, death, and transition by capturing both numbers and narratives—quantitative and qualitative data—and turning them into a visual story of complex human relationships.

FRAMING THE QUESTION

Does the fear of death hinder or motivate people's lives?

Initially, we envisioned the installation focusing on how religion and culture influence people’s fear of death. But we quickly realized that fear isn’t rooted in just one source—it’s deeply personal and different for everyone. To open the conversation to our diverse MRU community, we invited participants to share their own beliefs and experiences, whatever they might be. Each response captured three things: whether fear of death motivated or hindered their life, how deeply they feared it—minimal, moderate, or deep—and, most importantly, why. These layered perspectives came together to form a collective story of how death influences the way people live.

Our Process

View our process video here

RESEARCH

LITERATURE REVIEW

Measuring Fear: How Much, In What Way, and Why

Scholars highlight that the fear of death can both hinder and motivate. Lagner (2002) found it may lead to avoidance of risks and relationships, yet it can also inspire authentic living and prioritization of what matters most. Gligoric (2024) notes that acknowledging mortality often pushes people to make the most of their time. Cultural perspectives vary—while Zen Buddhism normalizes death as part of life, Western traditions often reinforce fear to maintain order. Cantisano (2020) further shows that fear levels differ widely, shaped by personal, cultural, and religious contexts. These insights shaped our installation design, which measured three variables: fear level, whether it hinders or motivates, and the reason why.

INITIAL CONCEPTS

SKETCHES/ LOW FIDELITY PROTOTYPES

Failing fast…

We initially began with a concept that required the audience to pick a leaf depending on its colour for whether death motivated or hindered their life, as well as a certain size of that leaf determined by how much they feared death. With the leaf they chose, they would write why they felt that way about death and then hang it up on the physical branches behind the instructions.

We quickly realized that execution for this would be complicated and hard, and sourcing materials for installation would be a challenge, so we had to accept our failure and go back to the drawing board.

REFINED CONCEPTS

From branches to roots— moving back to the drawing board and finalizing concepts

This prototype solidified our ideas of how exactly to showcase our data points in a way that was clear and engaging. We planned to have the varying lengths of roots representing the amount of fear each person felt dangle down below the tree. Having the participants attach the paper slips to the roots instead of hanging leaves on branches was more visually engaging and even further symbolic of our dead tree idea. Lastly, we decided on the idea of using the colours yellow and blue for the pieces of paper, as yellow is a colour that inspires hope, while blue is more melancholic.