Adaptation Tracker
Facilitating climate adaptation initiatives in African Agriculture through stakeholder collaboration
My Role
Concepting, Information Architecture, Design Strategy, Visual Design
Team
Periscopic
Year
2020
Project
African agriculture projects for adapting to climate change are diverse and complex. Our partner, The Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR) has found that stakeholders find it challenging to recognize operational gaps and potential collaborations, slowing the progress and expansion of climate adaptation efforts. To tackle these issues, we developed an interactive map and stakeholder network to visualize the distribution of initiatives and the connections among actors. Visit the live project here.
My Contributions
I was a part of all phases of this project, from initial concepting, creating wireframes, prototypes, and interactive elements, to refining the overall user experience. Additionally, I integrated tooltips and developed a visual system based on the client’s website and preferences to ensure a cohesive and intuitive interface.
A persistent mechanism with a view of multiple projects or actors allows users to locate specific information and also leave space for exploration of more projects and actors.
Crafting the Concept Blueprint
Our aim was to design a relational matrix that offered an overview of all actors and initiatives, providing a broad understanding of the project landscape. A map served this purpose well, with the addition of an interactive method for exploring connections.
Presenting the entire dataset of connects at once would have been overwhelming, making it challenging for users to pinpoint the most critical information. Instead of focusing on the entire network, we concentrated on projects linked to individual actors and partners, as this level of detail was more meaningful to the users.
This led us to a side navigation panel that offered two perspectives on the information, allowing users to explore connections by starting with either projects or actors, depending on their needs.
Prototypes helped us find appropriate solutions throughout the design process. For instance, we learned that while larger interactive components, like an overlay modal, could provide ample space for extensive information, they would also obstruct the map, hindering user exploration. We could then also see how choices for designing specific content would fit within and also influence the overall system.
Network diagrams were an intuitive way to show how relationships were formed, whether through involvement in a few projects with many collaborators or through participation in numerous projects with fewer collaborators. With interactive nodes, users can access detailed information about each project or view a connected partner.
Refining Interconnected Information
A part of my focus was on designing how users would access and view project information. Based on what actors or investors might find most useful, projects are sortable by the number of beneficiaries or project budget, helping stakeholders quickly assess the scale and financial scope of each initiative. Selecting a project opens a project detail panel, designed to show important information about project partners, funding, budgets, and specific agricultural practices. I made sure that accessing project details followed the same interaction patterns as accessing partner information, creating a consistent user experience.
During the design process, two challenges with the map arose. First, displaying country borders was problematic due to disputed boundaries. As users should already be familiar with their area of interest, country borders were removed to avoid confusion or contention.
Second, overlapping projects caused visibility issues, with some areas having dozens of projects that would require excessive zooming to differentiate. To address this, projects were given padding and distributed evenly packed around their central locations, but this led to a misleading impression of precise placements. To clarify that the points were not exact, they were arranged as a collective ring around their central location.
