Reinventing open-data portals

Open data, story first

In 2019 Matera was European Capital of Culture. To celebrate, the city wanted a creative, informative portal sharing the open data of that extraordinary year with its citizens.

Open data portals usually put the data first and the explanation second. We flipped the order: first the stories, and examples of what open data makes possible, then the downloadable datasets.

Machine-readable files like CSVs are only one part of a larger ecosystem that tells the story of Matera's year as European Capital of Culture.

An open data inception

To draw people into exploring open data and its creative reuse, we built a layered portal. Through data visualization, data journalism and web design, it gradually reveals how the data can be used.

Quantitative and qualitative data paint a picture of Matera's year through thematic sections and six in-depth micro-stories.

Thematic sections focus on the main areas of institutional data generated in 2019: participation, heritage, budget, legacy, diversity and care.

Micro-stories work like the sections, but each one tells a specific event of the year through its quantitative and qualitative data.

When in doubt, make it simple and rainbowish 🌈

We prefer simple visualizations to flamboyant charts. To help people see the patterns hidden in the data, we used colour and animation to keep things fresh and engaging.

To convey the liveliness and humanity of Matera's cultural programme, we used rounded shapes and a profusion of dots: many separate units forming meaningful clusters. And to spark curiosity, the legend lives in the text above each chart, with key words highlighted in the matching colours.

The open data corner

At the heart of the platform is the data itself, now published in an open, accessible format. Matera's 2019 datasets become a digital common that can inform, inspire and support new practices for local, national and international communities.

For each section, both the raw data and the aggregated data behind the visualizations can be downloaded. More is available in the Open Data Centre and in our GitHub repository, which holds all the data on the platform.

Let's break the screen

Together with the Matera 2019 Foundation, we felt that a digital project alone wasn't enough to spark a response offline.

To encourage the creative reuse of open data, we planned a series of one-day workshops across Italy, to involve citizens and anyone interested in data and information. Because of the pandemic, the events were postponed to the following summer.

Open data nobody opens?

Publishing data is the first step. Making people want to explore it is the next. Do you need to visualize your data too? We're here.