VizChitra 2025

Overview

‘A designer is a cunning plotter laying his traps.’ Vilem Flusser in his essay ‘About the Word Design’ talks about how design can be deceptive. Everything can be anything if the designer wants it to be. The line between bad design and misunderstood intent is often blurry. It’s easier to appreciate and make good design once you have experienced the worst of it.

The project began as an in-class critique activity and evolved into a full-blown exploration of how viz can go wrong—and what that teaches us about getting it right. Asking the students to create bad data viz was easier since it made their journey into the new space less daunting.

We bring to you a curated collection of visualisations gone made wrong. Some are redesigned versions of otherwise great charts, intentionally made worse. Others are tongue-in-cheek visual parodies, inspired by creators like Soren Iverson who use satire to question the logic of everyday design.

The exhibit also features a checklist of common traps or mistakes that can be avoided, gathered from classroom conversations. And it doesn’t stop there—attendees are invited to contribute! Printed or scribbled, all additions are welcome.

Key Takeaways

1. What makes a chart bad?
2. Intentional failure as a learning method
3. Sharpening visual literacy and learning how to critique
4. Checklist of what not to do when designing a data viz

Target Audience

Both seasoned professionals and curious newcomers who want to sharpen their visual literacy by engaging with the “what not to do” of data visualisation.

Speaker Bio

Anushka Gokhale is a Product Designer and a number-crunching storyteller. In her 4+ years of industry experience, she has collaborated with product owners, data engineers, developers, and researchers from several domains to bridge the gap between data and people.
Currently at Parallel HQ, previously at CivicDataLab. Visiting Faculty at SMI.

Rutu Tank is a Product Designer by profession, and design generalist by passion. She enjoys experimenting with different mediums like book-binding, crochet and collaging to spend her time and also to document it.
Currently at Parallel HQ, previously at CivicDataLab.