Tool: R

Wrote reproducible R code to gather, clean and analyze data from multiple sources to refresh the Inclusiveness Index, an annual, global ranking which gauges the degree of inclusivity across the world. The index relies on data measuring inclusivity towards race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, economic status, and political participation. My work served as the input for the visualization linked above.

Tool: Arduino

Conceived of and programmed an ambient user interface to communicate current weather through scent—akin to "smelling the rain"—and color combinations. Art and 3D modeling by Helena Guo. Supported by Ellis Martin, Alan Kyle, and Akshay Dan Bhavish Juleemun.

Tool: Python (pandas, NLTK)

Used Natural Language Processing tools in Python to quantatively determine the lexical difference between an article's headline and its preview text, as both appeared in a sample of print New York Times front pages. I found that certain parts of speech, i.e., plural nouns, singular nouns, and singular verbs, appear more frequently in headlines than they do in an article's front page preview. This finding confirmed the idea that print headlines are a unique form because they have to convey context, and capture readers' interest.

Tool: Python (pandas)

Used Python to build a player draft simulator that outputs the most equitable pick order ensuring no team has an unfair advantage at the time of player selection. The system has been in use for the Pakistan Super League, one of the world's most recognizable cricket leagues, since 2018.

Tools: IFTTT (If This Then That), Tumblr, Instagram

Built a semi-automated Tumblr website to display hand-picked one-point perspective photos from the web. Inspired by Stanley Kubrick's use of the one-point perspective and Kogonada's video ode to it.

Blog post meant as an introduction to data visualization featuring notable visualizations to inspire, and best practices.

Tool: JavaScript, D3

Collaborated with Noelle Fa-Kaji and Daniela Perez to tell the story of the US healthcare industry's labor reshuffle away from low-paid, high-stress work as a scrollytelly. My contributions included figuring out how to animate line charts in D3 (which we use to set up the story), leading the design of the narrative arc, and determining the most suitable copy to accompany the visualizations. This was the final project for a semester-long course in Information Visualization and we recevied very positive feedback from faculty. [Icon]

Tool: Tableau

Realized that a simple change from shading country areas to representing their values as dots helps tell the story of the 2017 Freedom of the Press Index better.

Tool: Microsoft Excel

Practiced iteration as a way of improving two published visualizations; focused on giving more prominence to the story by choosing an appropriate chart type (whereby vertical bars with a red shade represented the size of drop in the value of each bank), and well-thought titles and sub-titles.

Tool: Observable

Used visualization as an aid for telling a compelling story in the context of transportation, specifically travelling via train versus a plane. My story tied in ticket prices, journey durations, and CO2 emissions to tell a cohesive story with the help of three unique, bicolor charts.

Tool: Wireframes/Sketches

Suggested interesting ways of visualizing data from the Centre for Asian Philanthropy's one-of-a-kind research looking at policy support for philanthropy across Asia. Most metrics were categorical in nature or followed a likert scale posing an interesting challenge for finding different ways of plotting the same type of data.

Tools: Python, Microsoft PowerPoint

Delivered this training to 20+ individuals, and meant it as a gentle introduction to computing. I believe web scraping serves as a powerful, and visual, problem/programming context a lot of people are familiar with, and I structured the training around that. This was my first experience leading such a training, and I took away important lessons such as conducting workshops instead of lectures. Training materials are accessible here.

Tools: Python, Microsoft PowerPoint

Implemented takeaways from the previous effort. Namely, I divided the training into two lectures (the first structured around ensuring participants had the right setup/workspace and programming fundamentals/syntax, and the second on data scraping). I made sure to disseminate the power in scraping, and detailed ethical practices in this context (e.g., using APIs, reading TORs, scraping for educational purposes, etc.). Training materials are accessible here.

Tools: Stata, Microsoft PowerPoint

Delivered as part of an organization-wide effort to transition from Microsoft Excel to Stata, and allow colleagues to explore and anlayze data on their own. This was a smaller, more intimate set of sessions meaning I could troubleshoot in the moment, and ensure a shared level of understanding. All colleagues lauded the effort, and leadership hailed this as a sucess. Training materials are accessible here.

Platform: Substack

Frequent contributor to Zeerak Ahmed's newsletter which covers music and its interplay with technology and society in Pakistan. My contributions can be read in full here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Platform: Huffington Post (India)

Experimental, longform, non-fiction piece chronicling my experience tracing a local musician who I chanced upon during a road trip through the heart of Pakistan. Though broken now, the piece was accompanied by 9 tracks I had recorded from the musician.

Platform: The News (Pakistan)

Recap of a local, two-day, in-person indie music festival published online and in print.

Platform: Dawn.com (Pakistan)

Five Thirty Eight-style prediction model for the 2015 Cricket World Cup; I scraped necessary data, conceptualized the prediction model, contributed to its implementation, and wrote the copy for the story.

Tool: GIMP

Poster that was the runner up in a design competition my alma mater held for an academic conference. Attempted to implement the "us" versus "them" philosophy of war in my design.

Tool: GIMP

Winning poster for an academic conference held at my alma mater. Used a satellite image of Uttam Nagar, Delhi, India depicting physically encoded exclusion as the base layer.

Tool: GIMP

Poster advertising a road trip through the heartland of Pakistan.

Tool: GIMP

Alternative CD jacket—of one my favorite movies—I designed and printed as a gift for a friend's birthday.

Tool: GIMP

Alternative book jacket I designed and printed as a gift for a friend's birthday. Used a satellite image of a desert in Iran to capture the book's theme of lostness.