Lead UX Designer. 2023-2024. Lead the design of a data product, helping inform cities, to make them more climate resilient.

The Challenge

Climate change affects every city differently. While some face extreme heat, others battle flooding, storms, or rising sea levels. But despite these variations, one issue remains consistent: many city leaders lack the tools to make sense of complex climate data and apply it to real-world planning. We sought to answer:

How might we...educate and empower cities prepare for and mitigate climate risks effectively?

The Outcome

We designed and built a product concept that was successfully pitched to potential funders of the World Resources Institute (WRI). This tool aimed to help cities assess climate risks, prioritize actions, and make data-driven decisions.

The Context

Within WRI, there is a specialized Product Studio dedicated to tackling focused problems around climate change. Each year, they open a call for proposals, selecting initiatives that align with WRI’s mission of sustainability and resilience.

Climate change presents a universal challenge, but its impact varies significantly across cities. Policies, infrastructure, population density, and economic factors all influence how cities experience and address climate hazards. The threats faced by Los Angeles differ from those in Shanghai, requiring localized approaches to climate resilience.

This year, the Product Studio took on an initiative led by the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. Their mission is to support urban leaders and global partners in developing innovative solutions to emerging climate challenges.

Understanding Our Users

Our first step was to identify key stakeholders who would use and benefit from this product. To do this, we organized a design workshop, bringing together engineers, product managers, climate scientists, and urban planning experts from the WRI team. Through this session, we identified two primary user groups:

Mayorial Office Staff

Responsible for shaping climate policy, they needed a tool that distilled complex climate data into clear, actionable insights. With limited technical expertise, they required information that was straightforward, policy-relevant, and prioritized for decision-making.

City Operational Departments

Managing infrastructure and urban services, these teams faced on-the-ground challenges but lacked climate training. They needed a tool to translate climate models into practical guidance, helping them plan for temperature extremes, flooding, and other climate risks in their daily operations.

Competitive Landscape

We also evaluated existing climate data tools and identified several limitations. Many tools had a narrow geographic focus, offering insights only for specific countries or regions. Additionally, they presented raw climate data without providing clear risk projections or probability models, making it difficult for users to prioritize actions. Lastly, many platforms were overly complex and too technical for non-climate experts to navigate effectively.

Our approach aimed to bridge these gaps by:

• Providing a global dataset: Offering insights at a broader scale rather than focusing on isolated regions.
• Translating climate data into risk probabilities: Instead of just presenting raw numbers, our tool calculated likelihoods of hazards occurring, making it easier for decision-makers to prioritize threats.
• Enhancing accessibility and education: Ensuring city officials, who may not have a scientific background, could easily understand climate risk data and its implications.

Key Areas We Tackled

Based on these insights, we identified two core product areas for the first iteration:

Interactive Map View

The Interactive Map View served as a visual entry point for users to easily search for and locate their city, view climate risk data specific to their region, and explore key hazard indicators such as extreme heat, flooding, and storm surges, along with their probabilities over time. When global data was available, users could access a full dashboard with detailed climate projections and historical trends.

Guided Experience for First-Time Users

To support users unfamiliar with climate risk analysis, we developed an interactive, step-by-step onboarding experience. Users began by selecting their role (e.g., policy advisor, urban planner, emergency manager), which allowed the tool to prioritize climate hazards most relevant to their city and goals. A simplified breakdown of climate projections and their potential impact followed, helping users understand the climate models and their options. This guided approach prepared users to engage with the full dataset in the dashboard confidently. This structured experience ensured that even users with minimal climate expertise could navigate the data with ease.

Data City Dashboard

Understanding climate risk requires more than just raw data—it demands clarity, context, and comparison. The dashboard view was designed as the core analytical tool, allowing users to explore specific climate hazards affecting their city, adjust projections based on different modeling approaches, and gain actionable insights for long-term planning.

At its core, the dashboard provides a city-level overview of key climate indicators, such as extreme temperatures, flood risks, and air quality. Users can toggle between average and extreme values, compare probabilities across three different climate models, and select custom time periods to analyze future trends. A hover interaction delivers high-level insights for quick reference.

Key Learnings

• Data Visualization is Complex: Climate risk data is inherently complex. Converting scientific models into an intuitive, digestible format required extensive iteration. Finding the right balance between detail and clarity was a constant challenge.
• Great Ideas for the Future: While we focused on delivering an MVP, several promising ideas emerged for future iterations:
  • City Comparisons: Allowing cities to benchmark against similar locations and learn from their adaptation strategies.
  • Real-time Risk Analysis: Enabling cities to simulate different scenarios and assess how policy decisions impact future climate resilience.
  • Resources Library: Providing a curated collection of strategies, policies, and case studies to help cities address specific climate hazards effectively.

This project was a critical step toward equipping cities with the tools they need to combat climate hazards. By translating complex climate models into actionable insights, we helped city leaders and planners make informed decisions. And while our initial focus was on pitching the product to funders, the long-term goal remains the same: Empower cities worldwide to build a more climate-resilient future.