VizChitra 2025: India's first community-driven Data Visualization conference

Have you ever believed in love at first sight? In childhood, movies often portrayed this concept by freezing the frame and playing dramatic background music. But as we grow and experience more, we tend to move past initial infatuation. We engage in multiple, diverse interactions before forming a considered opinion about truly liking someone or something.

Similarly, our initial encounters with information often provide only a fragmented glimpse, much like forming a first impression based on limited cues. Robust understanding is rarely built on a single exposure. Instead, it emerges through iterative engagement. This process of integrating multiple interactions and observations is fundamental to overcoming initial biases and achieving a more complete representation of reality, whether we’re analyzing social dynamics or interpreting complex datasets.

Anekantavada (multiplicity of viewpoints), a core principle of Jainism, asserts that truth is multifaceted and that no single viewpoint can fully grasp it. It acknowledges that reality has multiple aspects and that different perspectives can all be valid, even if seemingly contradictory. This doctrine promotes non-absolutism and encourages a more inclusive understanding of truth.

Drawing on the above principles, my lightning talk, “Anekantadata - multiplicity of datapoints,” aims to move past traditional dashboring to building next-generation cockpits. These cockpits will be prescriptive in nature, and help communicate insights and actionable steps in a more consumable fashion.

Key takeaways

• Why multitude of interactions helps in learnability and grapsing insights
• Roast my dashboard framework: A framework which acts as a visual design guardrail to remove distractions and make your interactions with the user clean and concise.

Who is the audience for this talk/session?
This session is for anyone involved with dashboarding and reporting, including Business Analysts, Data Analysts, Data Scientists, Information Designers, and Graphic Designers.

About the Speaker:
I am Smit Shah, a Staff UX Designer at Teradata. Over the past 11 years, I have developed tools and platforms for data analytics, including ModelOps, feature catalogs, and notebook IDE experiences. A significant portion of this experience comes from the 101 months I spent at Mu Sigma, a data analytics service provider, where I gained extensive exposure to BI, data visualization, and the platforms used to build and develop them. My experience as a UX designer in that environment led to the development of the “Anekantadata” philosophy.

Portfolio link: https://xd.adobe.com/view/c513412f-c172-4d2e-bdde-c68aa229f652-9040/?fullscreen
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tsumitsu/