Shirley Wu
NET|August 2019

Shirley Wu, one half of the popular Data Sketches project, creates highly interactive, beautiful data visualisations. Here she gives us a look behind the scenes and shares the lessons she’s learned.

Oliver Lindberg
Shirley Wu
Shirley Wu was introduced to data visualisation JavaScript library D3.js during her first job as a front-end software engineer at a big data company in San Francisco. She slowly fell in love with the tool because it combined her two main passions: art – Wu started drawing and painting when she was four years old – and maths. No wonder she describes herself as three-quarters code and one quarter art on Twitter.

Just four years after graduating from university, Wu took the plunge and went freelance to create data visualisations fulltime. She visualises a wide variety of topics covering culture, politics, art and more. Wu names three projects, all released in 2017, as major influences on her career. The first one, Data Sketches (www.datasketch.es), is a collaboration with fellow data visualisation designer Nadieh Bremer from Amsterdam, which introduced the duo to the data-viz community. The idea was to choose a topic every month, create a visualisation each and document the entire process – from the data preparation and the sketching of ideas to the execution.

“The write-ups were just an afterthought,” Wu remembers, “but it turned out to be what people like the most. They come up to us and tell us how amazing it is to look behind the scenes and see the iterations beyond the polished end result. It was a really quick idea but it took us a very long time to name the project. We have a whole document full of names. One of my favourites is Shirley’s and Nadieh’s Visualisation Marathon Adventure. Obviously we didn’t go with that one!”

This story is from the August 2019 edition of NET.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the August 2019 edition of NET.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM NETView All
Camille Gribbons
NET

Camille Gribbons

UX designer at Booking.com, Camille Gribbons reveals how she first got into the industry

time-read
7 mins  |
June 2020
THE 5G UI REVOLUTION
NET

THE 5G UI REVOLUTION

Tris Tolliday describes his vision of a web UI catapulted forwards by 5G

time-read
3 mins  |
June 2020
HOW TO SHOWCASE YOUR DEV SKILLS
NET

HOW TO SHOWCASE YOUR DEV SKILLS

Aude Barral shares 5 top tips for landing your dream developer job

time-read
3 mins  |
June 2020
KNIVES OUT
NET

KNIVES OUT

Murder mystery film, Knives Out, grabbed everyone’s attention, and so did the fun website that promoted it. Oblio tells Tom May how it created its innovative 3D navigation

time-read
6 mins  |
June 2020
HOW EMOTIONAL LABOUR HINDERS WOMEN IN TECH
NET

HOW EMOTIONAL LABOUR HINDERS WOMEN IN TECH

Christine Brewis, head of digital marketing at Studio Graphene, discusses how gender parity in tech has changed over the last ten years, and what more can be done

time-read
5 mins  |
June 2020
EDAN KWAN
NET

EDAN KWAN

He swapped life as a singer for a career making eye-popping digital visuals. The Lusion founder chats to Tom May about battling demons, winning awards and where digital advertising is heading

time-read
8 mins  |
June 2020
ANDREW COULDWELL
NET

ANDREW COULDWELL

The Brit in LA discusses his new book on design systems, Laying the Foundations

time-read
3 mins  |
June 2020
Top 5 Tips For Ensuring Web Content Is Accessible For All
NET

Top 5 Tips For Ensuring Web Content Is Accessible For All

Merlyn Meredith outlines five top tips for ensuring web content is accessible for all

time-read
2 mins  |
May 2020
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR BROWSERS?
NET

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR BROWSERS?

Nico Turco examines the state of play with browsers, whether developers should encourage diversity or monopoly and how Google fits into it all

time-read
6 mins  |
May 2020
YEARS IN THE MAKING
NET

YEARS IN THE MAKING

Exclusively for net: The latest in a series of anonymous accounts of nightmare clients

time-read
3 mins  |
May 2020