Exploring Financial Literacy & Visual Metaphors

VFL image with Alec Monopoly artwork

VFL image with Alec Monopoly artwork

 

What We Do

The Visualizing Finance Lab (VFL) at The New School in New York City explores the ways in which complex financial situations and dynamics can be explained through visual, metaphorical and narrative representations. The lab’s initial goal is to develop a vocabulary for describing illustrations and other visualizations of the recent financial crisis, and creating a searchable online database. These tools will assist designers and creative professionals to contribute more confidently to the discourses of business and economics, and establish a common language for artists, editors, and educators in building financial literacy and understanding.

 
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Projects

We've organized symposia, art shows, and workshops.

 

"Co-designed Narrative Visualizations can provide a framework... to engage with targeted community groups as partners in the development process of financial education materials."

— DESIGNING FINANCIAL LITERACY WITH THE OTHER 90%, VFL

 

Visual Storytelling

The Visualizing Finance Lab partnered with Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners  to create a comic narrative based on “Emma’s Story”: a character and narrative developed for use in Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners’s Getting Ahead workshop aimed at low income and financially stressed new yorkers.

Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners is a community-based financial counseling and financial services provider.

See the Full Cartoon

 

Publications

The VFL publishes papers and presents their work at conferences. Download the full PDF for our papers below:

  • "Teaching the design of narrative visualization:
    behavioral economics and financial literacy." Studies in Material Thinking. Read.
  • "Narrative Visualization to Describe and Assess Decision-Making." Read.
  • "Designing Financial Literacy: Research x Community." Learn x Design: The Third International Conference for Design Education Researchers. Read.
  • "Narrative visualization for co-design with a community
    partner." Form Akademisk. Read.
  • "Designing Financial Literacy with the Other 90%." Read. 
  • "Teaching the design of narrative visualization: Using metaphor for financial literacy and decision making." Read. 
  • "Narrative visualisation for co-design with a community partner." Form Akademisk. Read.

 

Who We Are

Aaron Fry

CO-DIRECTOR

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF DESIGN STRATEGIES, PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL FOR DESIGN

 

Carol Overby

CO-DIRECTOR

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF DESIGN STRATEGIES, PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL FOR DESIGN

 

 

 

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Jennifer Wilson 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS, EUGENE LANG COLLEGE THE NEW SCHOOL FOR LIBERAL ARTS

Bhargavi Kamakshivalli

Associate RESEARCH Director

 

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Nadia DeLane

ASSOCIATE RESEARCHER