Future-proofing communities

The Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) has developed an interactive map in collaboration with The Community Economic Development Network and The Energy Mix about Community Susceptibility in Canada. They were seeking Voila:’s support to produce a static infographic that summarizes the key messages.

The infographic, placed on an easel in front of a gray background, is titled “Futureproofing communities”. The infographic is divided in two parts. The part on the left, the most important, is shaped like a square and indicates the characteristics that determine a community's level of exposure. It shows five groups of circles, each representing a community. These groups are arranged according to their level of susceptibility, from top to bottom, from most to least susceptible. The size and colour of each circle represent, respectively, the size of the community workforce and one or several of the three metrics to which the community is most susceptible. On the right, a separate column mentions the “Community Transformations Project” and outlines five steps to improve a community's resilience.

Understanding the findings

This project analyzes the impact of climate change on the Canadian workforce, focusing on ten community profiles and a series of government measures developed to support it. At the beginning of our mandate, the client had already conducted extensive data collection and analysis. They had developed an internal interactive dashboard to present the research findings. Our role was to explore with them the conclusions drawn from the data and the key messages they wanted to convey to their audience.

The image shows the internal interactive dashboard developed by IRPP. The top half contains a map, showing susceptibility levels for each census division, and its control panel, which allows to filter by level of susceptibility and province or territory. The bottom half contains stacked bar charts that show information about the demographic profile for the labour force aged 15+ and allows users to filter among industries and provinces.

From map to infographic

While the client’s dashboard was relying on a map, it became clear that it would not be the right design to convey the message on a static infographic. Indeed, the characteristics of the findings were not based on geography, but on the economic diversification of communities and their size. In this context, we began our information design research by exploring other avenues based on the client’s brief.

Before

This image is an infographic titled “Community Transformations Project - Supporting Workers and Communities on the Road to Net” and represents the infographic before Voilà:’s work. In the middle, the core message section is surrounded by 4 sections: “Challenge“, “Context“, “Call to action“ and “Opportunity“. Each section contains 2 paragraphs of text. In each of the 4 corners of the page, a square box contains a “Killer fact”.

Combine shapes and colours to develop our argument

Concerning the shapes, we chose to work with circles to represent each community and sized them according to population. About colours, the palette includes three colours that represent the three types of susceptibilities for the communities, such as intensity, facility and market susceptibility. Our exploration started with a palette that would provide seven combinations, which proved too many to easily distinguish. Our ultimate solution was to split the circles into as many colours as necessary. Finally, we developed people icons inside larger circles in order to add a human touch to the infographic.

This visual shows a series of 3 images showing the dimensions used to depict the communities in the infographic. In the first image, a collection of different sized circles represents the use of shape as the first dimension. The second image shows colour as the second dimension. It is represented by a Venn diagram of 3 different colours with its different colour combinations, simplified into 3 distinct colours. The third image shows icons as the third dimension and gathers different sized and coloured circles, the bigger ones containing icons of people.

Develop the reading path

Organizing information is essential to making it clearer. We decided to separate the infographic into two parts: on the left, the explanation of the measures and their levels of susceptibility, and on the right, more information about the context. Concerning the communities, we highlighted the most vulnerable communities at the top and followed a drawn path downward to illustrate the communities less and less vulnerable. We also wanted to emphasize the finding that 90% are not particularly susceptible.

This image is made up of three distinct visuals. At the top, the infographic is separated into two sections. On the left, the first section coloured in teal is focused on explaining the metric and the second section on the right, contrasted in beige, is about the importance of improving resilience and solutions given. Underneath, an excerpt of the infographic shows the 5 groups of circles in order of most to least vulnerable.

The final result

Here is the final result, which can be viewed in a larger format. For more information about this project and to continue exploring, click here.

The infographic, placed on an easel in front of a gray background, is titled “Futureproofing communities”. The infographic is divided in two parts. The part on the left, the most important, is shaped like a square and indicates the characteristics that determine a community's level of exposure. It shows five groups of circles, each representing a community. These groups are arranged according to their level of susceptibility, from top to bottom, from most to least susceptible. The size and colour of each circle represent, respectively, the size of the community workforce and one or several of the three metrics to which the community is most susceptible. On the right, a separate column mentions the “Community Transformations Project” and outlines five steps to improve a community's resilience.

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