Depicting the Need for Systems Change
Graphicacy and Outright’s dynamic dashboard enhancements help visualize pathways to improving global systems and sparking bolder action.
Curbing global warming, halting the loss of biodiversity, and building a just and equitable economy are among the world’s most pressing needs. To track progress and reveal systemic obstacles to reaching these goals, World Resources Institute (WRI), the Bezos Earth Fund, and a team of partner organizations created the wide-ranging Systems Change Lab data platform. To help bring this platform to life, Systems Change Lab worked with Graphicacy and interactive agency Outright.
Launched at the COP27 climate conference, the Systems Change Lab platform includes data dashboards, narrative pages, and other content allowing users to monitor progress, learn and share pathways to change systems, and encourage bolder action now and moving forward. The platform is organized around the world’s major systems, from food to finance, transport to good governance. Five systems are currently live on the site, and the final platform will include data from more than a dozen systems.
“We’re trying to find a compelling way to visualize data across multiple systems into a single platform,” said Cathline Dickens, Product Manager for Systems Change Lab and part of a dedicated team of researchers, data specialists, and strategists. “It’s been essential having Outright and Graphicacy work with us hand-in-hand to figure out how to bring systems change to life.”
Visualizing Complexity
Experts at Systems Change Lab spent more than two years gathering data to support the platform. Determining what to do with the data — and how to tell accurate stories on systems change — was a complex challenge. The platform needed to provide multiple points of entry for users, an overview of the concept of systems change, as well as detailed background about specific indicators.
Systems Change Lab researchers identified a set of critical shifts that are needed within systems to help spur transformational change. Each shift displays a set of indicators that measure progress toward science-based targets, and a set of indicators that monitor factors that can enable or prevent progress toward these targets. This provides a framework of the current state of play and level of action needed to transform a system.
The challenge was explaining multiple components of a system to users and allowing them to find insights at any level. Graphicacy and Outright made that complexity coherent with an overall site design that encouraged exploration, and created summary visualizations at each step of the way. There are dedicated pages for each System and each Shift, and every page follows a consistent design language of color coding and icons.
“The sheer volume of data was a major challenge,” said Cathline. “Finding the beauty in visualizing the indicators was a really big feat that they pulled off.”
A hub for power users
In addition to the narrative pages, the Graphicacy and Outright teams created a dashboard section meant for power users, showing in a concise way the breadth of the data within the platform. The user has options to view all the data at once as a circular diagram called the pinwheel, or in a small multiple display called the grid view. The pinwheel paints an overarching picture of all the systems at once, while the grid enables user-controlled filtering and searching for specific indicators.
While the pinwheel concept had been part of the site design since the beginning, the design team re-worked it through many iterations to make it understandable and usable. “For the pinwheel, the design team helped us visualize new possibilities at a point where we’d been stuck,” said Cathline. “We landed on an end product that was much easier to understand.” Interactivity helps bring the pinwheel to life: clicking on any wedge to expand it and show details in a sidebar.
The pinwheel was just one design that Graphicacy and Outright translated into a working product. The team reimagined all the data visualization elements across the site, and provided engineering solutions that allowed the team to easily add or update indicators. “The Graphicacy and Outright teams were there for the beauty as well as the bugs,” said Cathline, “working on the fly and fixing issues quickly and efficiently.”
Connecting the dots to spark lasting change
Systems Change Lab has created a sound infrastructure for adding data and numbers, explanations and meaning, and guidance for a variety of users — from policymakers to philanthropists to media and researchers. The work done on the project thus far lets the team continue to add new systems and grow the platform in the future.
A “Connections Tool” is coming in 2023 with stories that show how all the systems are interconnected and highlight where coordinated action is needed most. “Systems change is a huge web, so being able to display those connections is critical,” Cathline said. “And we’re excited to have Outright and Graphicacy help us figure out how to do that, too.”
Graphicacy partners with clients to tell engaging stories with data. Graphicacy’s team combines storytelling, thoughtful human-centered design, and deep technical capabilities to build and deploy strategic, data-rich digital projects. Graphicacy has created data visualizations and infographics for top-tier organizations and companies, domestically and internationally, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the World Bank, the Center for American Progress, the Anti-Defamation League, and many others.
