Interactions with Climate Change: a Data Humanism Design Approach

Video

Interactions about climate change have been mostly focused on a negative or neutral form of communication, in line with the so-called “doom-and-gloom” narrative. However, recent research and guidelines point to the need to engage audiences in a more positive, story-focused and actionable way. In this pictorial, we describe a Data Humanism design approach formulated from its original manifesto. We present this proposal through a prototype that engages users with climate change data related to the oceans in a contextualised, personalised and action-focused way. To create this approach, we operationalised data humanism into design steps that guided the design process. Through the analysis of the applied study, we identify opportunities and challenges faced with this approach and with engaging diverse audiences “in the wild” with climate issues, guiding the design of future data humanism climate narratives through interactive data visualisations.