The ever-worsening air quality in Indonesia prompted Bandung Technological Institute’s student Stephanie Fani to choose air pollution as her main topic in the ASEAN Data Science Explorers (ADSE) 2019.

Together with his teammate from the same university, Owen, she utilised SAP Analytics Cloud to develop a storyboard titled ‘Green Our Cities, Grow Our World’ with an aim to tackle air pollution problem in the Indonesia. “It is our belief that air pollution will get worse as we continue to develop as a country. That is why we chose this topic and proposed an idea that can provide sustainable solution for air pollution problem,” Stephanie said.

In developing the storyboard, Stephanie incorporated compelling data visualisation and insights to make the storyboard easier to understand. One of the key insights they found was fossil-fueled transportation and industry are the leading factors contributing to air pollution. “Making the storyboard was definitely not easy. We had a lot of ideas, but we were afraid that if we put too many things into our storyboard, people will have a hard time to understand it,” Stephanie confessed. “We avoided that by visualising our insights so that people can easily see the big picture of our ideas.”

Stephanie’s journey in ADSE 2019 was not without challenges. For her, the biggest challenge was presenting the storyboard to the judges and audiences as not all of them came from data analytics background. “I was afraid that we couldn’t explain our storyboard properly and failed to make them understand,” she said. “Thankfully, the mentoring that I received from the ASEAN Foundation and SAP taught me how to tell stories from my data. The knowledge I received made me feel confident to perform as best as I can.” Stephanie’s hard work did not go to waste as she and Owen managed to win the National Finals and represented Indonesia in the ADSE 2019’s Regional Finals.

Stephanie admitted that she benefited a lot from her participation in ADSE 2019. “As a student of Mathematics, my ADSE experience enables me to see data differently,” she said. “ADSE taught me not only how to analyse data using data analytics software, but also to extract valuable insights from the data that I possess and communicate those insights to people in an effective way.”