Making sense of global data through stories

All the data in the world, in one place

It started with a request from Seed 360 festival: "We would like to create a dataroom with all the data on the planet. Can you?" 😅

Climate, population, water, food, biodiversity. Each topic comes with its own sources, methodologies and units of measure. Putting them side by side without care would be methodologically incorrect. And yet they all describe the same thing, and we know that it is all connected.

The challenge was not to collect more data, but to make that complexity readable without flattening it.

A system made of small units

We designed a modular dashboard able to hold a huge amount of information: data from more than 200 countries, spanning up to 90 years.

At its core is the information widget, a small unit that can take different forms: a histogram, a line chart, a single number. Widgets can be combined freely, creating a flexible system that adapts to each dataset instead of forcing every dataset into the same shape.

A guided way in

So much data can easily become overwhelming. To avoid it, we added an assisted way of exploring, based on data storytelling.

We called them Stories: more than 30 entry points, each focused on a specific topic and built only on the data relevant to it. Visitors don't need to know where to start. They can follow a question and let the data lead the way.

Open to everyone

The Seed dataroom lives beyond the festival as a common good, freely available to journalists, creators, researchers and citizens.

It is not meant to give final answers, but to help people discover the complexity we are part of, and how closely its pieces are connected.

Do you have data to tell?

Whether it's a festival like Seed 360, an institution or a company, every dataset hides a story waiting to be seen. Do you need to visualize your data too? We're here.