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Donato Ricci is a Communication designer and a researcher in the area of data & information visualization.

Currently, he is a PostDoc researcher and design lead at SciencesPo|médialab, where he conducts researches and participates to projects regarding the use of visualization in human and social sciences. In particular, he follows all the design aspects of Bruno Latour's latest project, called AIME, in the field of digital humanities and he develops visual models, tools and approaches for interpreting social phenomena (i.e. socio-technical controversies) through digital traces.

Since 2005 he has been involved in the development of the DensityDesign Lab research and teaching programs, where he started and deepened his interest in exploring the role of visual languages to increase public engagement in complex social issues by using digital data available on the net.
In 2010 he obtained a PhD degree, summa cum laude, in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication at the Politecnico di Milano discussing the dissertation: “Seeing what they are saying: Diagrams for social complexity and controversies”.

He is Research Assistant Professor of "Digital tools and methods for visualization" at Politecnico di Milano and Assistant Professor of “Representação e Conhecimento” (Knowledge and Representation) at Universidade de Aveiro (Portugal). The common aim of these two courses is to expose and exploit the representational mechanisms of disciplines as geography and cartography and their artifacts –namely diagrams and maps– to be repurposed in the practice of design.

His works have been featured in several conferences and exhibitions (MediaLAB Prado – Visualizar08; SIGGRAPH09 Conference; MIT Humanities + Digital Conference, The Art of Network), publications and showcases (Data Flow; Information Graphics; Visual Complexity; Visual storytelling). Furthermore, as a member of the DensityDesign lab, he got a bronze (2012) and a silver medal (2013) at Malofiej-Awards. Read Less