Data Visualization Turns Results into Stories

Viraj Muthye is a bioinformatician at Alberta Precision Laboratories and the cofounder of the Creative Science Alliance. Whether he is crunching data or communicating science, his goal is to tell a good story. For him, a big part of science storytelling is having the right visuals. From the lab to the broader community, Muthye uses artistic principles to translate complex science into meaningful insights through data visualization.

Why is data visualization important in research?

I believe that visualizations translate data into a story. When I took a Google course on data analytics, I realized how much of a gap there was between bioinformaticians—who often have a lot of data but focus mostly on just showing the outcomes—and data analysts—who think much more about communicating the information to an audience. I learned a lot of ways to actually visualize data, which I now use to create websites for researchers who don’t have a bioinformatics background and would struggle to interpret their data otherwise.

Because data, and how we present it, tells a story, it’s important to transform results responsibly into visuals. A good visualization can show you really interesting patterns in your data; however, a bad visualization, like truncating the Y-axis or choosing the wrong type of plot, can lead you or your audience to the wrong conclusions. For people starting out, tools like Datawrapper or the Google data analytics course can be helpful to learn the basics of data storytelling and how to do it accurately.

What inspired you to create some of your public data visualizations?

I really love exploring biodiversity. When I moved to Calgary, I kept missing buses because I was so engrossed in watching the birds, especially the magpies. At the time, I wanted to build my visualization portfolio beyond research in a way that could help people analyze data related to Calgary, so I decided to collect information on bird data. I used data from iNaturalist to track species seasonal variations, geographic locations, and change over a period of two years. I also hoped that this would help people outside of research see how to explore and analyze data.

How else have you promoted science communication and visualization?

Recently, I hosted an event called The Art of Science Subtraction, where I encouraged my colleagues to create a science zine, which is a one-page cartoon with a few panels, to summarize their work. The concept behind this is to go beyond just eliminating jargon in our communication but also remove any non-essential details.

I also founded the Creative Science Alliance in 2024 as a science outreach platform to promote science communication. I think that art is really important in this, because while people may forget the details of what they learn, they’ll likely remember how something made them feel, and art is good at solidifying those connections. I also realized how much more useful visuals can be for communicating topics like biodiversity loss and genomic medicine than walls of numbers. I’ve recently held events for making science zines and, at another event, gave out foldscopes with journals so that people can record and reflect on what they see.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.