Responses by Tammy Dayton, creative director, Moth Design.

Background: Probable Futures is a climate literacy initiative that enables and encourages people to have practical conversations and make informed decisions about the future in a changing climate. We seek to build bridges between climate science and cultures, organizations, technology, and design. The freely accessible platform at probablefutures.org offers interactive maps, science, historical context and stories to help us envision a range of climate futures. It aims to serve as a global utility, helping individuals, organizations and governments understand and prepare for what is coming everywhere on Earth in terms of heat, lack of cold, humidity, rainfall, drought and wildfire.

Design core: We looked to film and books as inspiration for the site design. The idea was that while there might be significant moments or scenes, the whole of the site experience should be the most meaningful. The site offers something that simply didn’t exist before: a collection of writing that helps us understand the workings of our planet; a set of data-rich interactive maps supported by short vignettes that vivify climate change; and educational primers about stability, risk and complexity.

Favorite details: The maps on the site required skillful translation from climate models into a usable tool for the average person. There is so much complexity under the hood, but the team was disciplined about crafting a simple, elegant user experience so that exploring the maps would be as intuitive to as many people as possible.

The site also features a three-minute video about the connection between a stable climate and our civilization. It feels obvious when you watch the video, yet, it is also not common knowledge. The video combines well-established insights from climate science, anthropology and civics into a compelling narrative that helps viewers contextualize the changing climate we’re experiencing today.

Finally, the visualizations of Probable Futures break the “norms” of what you might expect to find on a site that features so much science. Humanity’s understanding of the Earth’s systems is an enormous achievement, and the insights from it are beautiful. We wanted the site’s design to reflect the beauty and wonder of our physical world and our ability to understand it. For example, we commissioned bespoke illustrations from artist Berke Yazicioglu; our photography choices avoid climate change tropes; and the maps use unexpected, beautiful color combinations.

Challenges: We often used the analogy of building the plane while flying it during this process. When we began, we weren’t sure exactly what form the site would take. We established a process to facilitate meaningful collaboration between the authors, designers, scientists and engineers involved so that we could ideate and iterate. We were all learning as we went, bumping up against new technologies, new information and new ways to look at the world.

Time constraints: As is the case with any climate communication, there was a sense of urgency to get this information into the world. At the same time, Probable Futures promotes the idea that to truly understand what a changing climate will mean for our society, we must slow down, think critically and act purposefully. We are the anti “move quick and break things” culture. We ended up launching the site in phases to get this critical climate information to the people who most need it while also giving us the time to craft additional volumes thoughtfully and intentionally.

Divergent paths: Since we’ve launched the site in stages, we’ve had the tremendous benefit of getting feedback from users and community members and have made site enhancements along the way. That feedback loop will continue to be important as the site evolves.

Technology: Our use of Mapbox for interactive maps was critical. Climate model output is three-dimensional data unlike any data typically used by developers. File sizes are significant, especially when working with data that covers almost the entire globe. Mapbox’s tiling service enabled us to condense vast amounts of data into tiles that are high resolution, visually compelling and highly performant during the user experience. It’s just one of the partnerships we have forged that has significantly impacted the site and our organization.