Designing a Visualization Atlas: Lessons & Reflections from The UK Co-Benefits Atlas for Climate Mitigation

TL;DR

This paper details the design process of the UK Co-Benefits Atlas, highlighting challenges, stakeholder engagement, and five key forces influencing visualization atlas development over a 10-month period.

Contribution

It introduces a conceptual framework of five driving forces—data, people, stories, context, and the atlas—that shape visualization atlas design.

Findings

Stakeholder engagement informed iterative design and understanding of user interactions.

The five driving forces influence different stages of atlas development.

Reflective process aids future atlas design by emphasizing dynamic factors.

Abstract

This paper reports on the process of designing the UK Co-Benefits Atlas, which communicates and publicizes data for climate mitigation. Visualization atlases -- an emerging type of platform to make data about complex topics comprehensive through interactive visualizations and explanatory content -- pose challenges beyond traditional visualization projects. Atlases must address diverse and often uncertain audiences and use cases, support both explanatory and guided exploration, and accommodate complex, evolving data. Over 10 months, our team of visualization and domain experts conducted 8 design workshops, iterative prototyping, 15 stakeholder onboarding sessions, and continuous reflection. These intertwined processes informed the development of the Atlas, comprising over 400 pages of visualizations and explanations. They also enabled a deeper understanding of how stakeholders may critically engage with the atlas in practice, in terms of interests, potential frictions when navigating huge amounts of data, and envisioned usage scenarios. Reflecting on our design process, we identify five driving forces in atlas design -- data, people, stories, context, and the atlas itself -- whose shifting dynamics influence different stages of visualization atlas design in different ways. Grounded in our case study, we discuss using these forces as a conceptual starting point for structuring and reflecting on future atlas design processes.