Designing a Visualization Atlas: Lessons & Reflections from The UK Co-Benefits Atlas for Climate Mitigation
2026-04-22 • Human-Computer Interaction
Human-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors describe how they created the UK Co-Benefits Atlas, a tool that shows lots of climate data through interactive visuals and explanations. They explain that making such an atlas is hard because it has to serve many different users with complex, changing information. Over 10 months, the team used workshops, prototypes, and feedback to build a large collection of visualizations and learn how people might use the atlas. They also identified five main factors—data, people, stories, context, and the atlas itself—that affect how these atlases should be designed. Their work suggests these factors can help guide and think about making similar visualization atlases in the future.
Visualization atlasClimate mitigation dataInteractive visualizationDesign workshopsStakeholder engagementData storytellingUser-centered designIterative prototypingComplex data navigationCo-benefits
Authors
Jinrui Wang, Alexis Pister, Sian Phillips, Sarah Bissett, Ruaidhri Higgins-Lavery, Clare Wharmby, Andrew Sudmant, Uta Hinrichs, Benjamin Bach
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.