What is a number you care about?

A few months ago, I drove my son home from college. It was a long haul for us. One stretch, from Rochester to Nashville, was thirteen hours in the car.

The benefit for me was that this gave me lots of opportunity for my parent check in: “How were classes? What are you enjoying? How’s the food at the dining center?”

My son started sharing about his meals. He talked about cottage cheese, chicken breasts, greek yogurt with berries. The more he shared, the deeper he went into macros, protein goals, target calorie ranges.

He had developed a full and deliberate system to manage what he was eating. He had a plan to meet his health and fitness goals.

I’m quite a bit older — and very aware of all the nutritional concepts. A hundred times I had heard the advice about grams of protein and need for more fiber.

But hearing it and absorbing it are different things. Maybe it was the long stretches of road. Or his passion. Or that it was coming from someone I cared about. For once, I took the time to absorb the information and it landed in a new way.

One of my golden rules as a parent: if my kids care about something, I should try to care too. That played a role too.

By the end of that drive, something had shifted, not from learning new information, but because the numbers of eating had gotten tethered to someone I love.

This car ride started another journey for me.

For a couple of decades, I’ve been trying to break through to find better ways to deliver data so people engage and act on it. Reflexively, I’ve taken on the perspective of the author. I help clients design better visualizations, more thoughtful dashboards, and more compelling data stories. If your audience doesn’t care, there is no data product perfect enough to reach them.

Now I am trying to think about the problem from the perspective of the recipient. Which led me to this question: What makes someone care about a number?

I cared when I took the time to pay attention because my son was explaining it. That’s a special case and a hint. If we can explain when and why people care about the information they receive, it will unlock new paths to make data useful.