Four Rules to Making Your Climate Action Data Work

From individual activists to major government programs, it’s all too common for people who work on work on trying to change the world to make mistakes in the art of influencing people — especially when it comes to using numbers. Here are four principles from my book, How to Save the World you should be applying to the data on the issue you are trying to change.

1. ACTION: Does it ask a person to take a specific action?

​The data you work on needs to be disclosed publicly and it needs to be designed to encourage a person to do an action or behavior.

Conduct a user story mapping workshop before you start any project to figure out what this action will be. It’s not a fancy process — just sit down with a pen and paper, whiteboard, or sticky notes and draw the flow of steps your target person will take through their day and how they will be prompted to do the action you want them to do. You can learn more about how to do it in the Behavior Change chapter in my book or search for “user story mapping” or “behavior mapping” online —there are lots of tutorials out there.

Isolate the action you want your target to take, and make sure your design draws your audience toward completing this one action.

2. EASY: Is the data as easy as possible to understand?

The data you show people needs to be easy to understand. You can communicate data in a way that is immediately comprehensible using a symbol such as a star rating, an A-B-C grade, or a color.

Designers can often get excited by fancy infographics — remember that weird trend with all those really long html embedded infographics with 47 charts and more stuffed in? Visually interesting — but those busy infographics look more like design-nerd wallpaper than a data-driven nudge that gets people to act.

On the other side of the design spectrum, scientists and engineers may be inclined to send out a table of 32 lines of data printed in black and white and using a near-illegible tiny font.

Simplify your data into the most reductive possible message. Learn from traffic lights: red, orange, green.

See examples of concept designs that use these principles here. Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Instagram.

3. COMPARE: Are your comparing the target person's data against anyone else?

Humans are powerfully motivated by comparing ourselves to others. Your data (and the design of it) needs to allow for the comparison of one thing, person, company, product, or property against another. Design your data so that people can make these comparisons in an easy and intuitive way.

Behavioral psychology studies show that when you compare someone’s performance to another person or to the average of the group, performance can skyrocket. You should be baking comparison charts and leaderboards into every element of your project’s design.

4. LOCATION: Are you showing the data in the most effective time and place to influence the person's action?

​Your data needs to be displayed or interjected at the right time and place when people are making the one critical decision or behavior that affects your cause. The vehicle fuel efficiency stickers are positioned on the car window when you buy the car — it’s right there at the time and place when it matters. Likewise, a prompt to order a vegan meal is likely to be successful if shown when someone is ordering lunch or shopping for food at the market. If a message displayed separately from when and where the desired action takes place, such as on social media, in a bookstore, or on a billboard, it could be too far removed from the pertinent moment to drive much change at all.

Does your project tick all four boxes?

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