Harsha Krishna

There is an ancient Indian fable known as “The Blind Men and the Elephant.” Once, a group of blind men encountered an elephant. They had never encountered an elephant before. They proceeded to comprehend the elephant by touch. One of them felt its trunk and exclaimed that it was like a snake. Another felt an ear and exclaimed that it was like a fan. Yet another felt the legs and explained that they were like pillars. The mental image conceived by the men must have been fantastic. 

Like the parable, forming a clear picture when examining different datasets to understand emergent phenomena can be a challenging task. As the parable illustrates, it is hard to envision the social, cultural, and economic context in which a young person grows up by analyzing datasets from just one system. To gain a more comprehensive perspective, one must integrate various datasets to capture the full range of experiences that a young person may encounter.

In my research, I investigate the development and deployment of “boundary objects” that facilitate collaboration across complex institutions. Boundary objects are plastic enough to adapt to the constraints of several domains yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. Currently, my research focuses on promoting mental well-being among Stockholm's youth. I use data-driven visualizations by combining datasets from various departments of Stockholm's municipalities. I collaborate with stakeholders to identify which aspects contribute to promoting well-being among young people. My approach enables me to utilize existing official datasets released by Sweden to help stakeholders form a cohesive understanding of the youth experience. 

I am developing a network database to combine data from different municipalities, forming an integrated data pool that I then use to construct specific datasets for visualizations. The visualizations thus produced form a boundary object.  My work explores the development of visualization-type boundary objects and their use in collaboration with stakeholders to promote well-being among Stockholm's youth.