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.

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.