Speeding up understanding of social and environmental issues is going to be pretty hard if all the good info is imprisoned in tables. The three trends of data being more open, everything being more visual and life being on-demand/always-on should mean that numbers are no longer just for the analysts and ratings agencies.
This is a chance for companies to build trust and gain relevance to peoples lives (in an increasingly sceptical world) using information they already have. It may also help in answering the question ’why sustainability branding sucks?’, by providing information – i.e. non-financial data that is central to business operations – with an outlet fit for the 21st century. All this fits into the idea of enabling people to live better lives (for which you may be thanked with their custom) against the backdrop of the big technological, social, economic and environmental shifts going on.
Below i’ve outlined three areas where data visualization can help make sustainability fit for the new operating environment.
1. Risks – outline what the problems are
Your business is exposed to social and environmental risks. It’s likely that your stakeholders are too. It’s also likely that your stakeholders - lets call them people – don’t spend their free time working out how much water is embedded in their evening meal and what the implications of this are.
from Linda Yuki Nakashini click to visit her site
2. Opportunities – how to do things better
Creating tools for people to understand that by changing their behaviour they can be healthier, use less energy etc. You could write this but again, people don’t generally spend their free time looking up corporate websites. If you make an enabling tool like this one from GE and Pentagram, you become relevant to peoples lives and more likely to engage around issues that matter.
3. Performance – data is not just for the analysts
Potentially the most exciting part. Lets think of a corporate responsibility report - a catch all document that comes out once a year meant to serve lots of different stakeholders. Performance data on water and energy use, emissions and other stuff goes at the back. The work that goes into hitting targets on reducing these impacts condensed to once-a-year numbers at the back of a report -(granted explained in the body of the document).
Now, Imagine a live visualization that expands or contracts as new data is fed into it – as explained in the talk above – on a quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily(!) basis. This gives you the chance to demonstrate the efforts you make everyday to reduce your impacts.
It’s expected, it’s easy
In a increasingly visual, on-demand and open world, companies are lagging behind. It in someways mirrors the ground lost to NGOs who harnessed low-cost social media platforms to engage with people long before companies got a sniff. More data is being made available to people to use for themselves. There are also more and more APIs out there to help people use data and other tools to create something relevant to their lives – see this video of live tube map of London created with live tube time data and google maps. Add a bit of cognitive surplus idea to this- people spending more of their own free time creating stuff (for free) – and getting your data out there is required if you want permission to engage.
The good news is you are almost doing this stuff already. The numbers (and comparative data) exist. As a company you can move away from trying to position yourself as sustainable – an increasingly futile exercise in a highly (rightly) sceptical world – to sharing info on risks, helping people live better and demonstrating that you are on the case.
For more see Information is Beautiful , Visualising Complexity, Good,Infosthetics or this post from Inspired Magazine
Related posts:
Sweat the small stuff: No more generic sustainability branding
Rebuilding blocks: sustainability, economics, design
From thought leadership to mass collaboration
Clay Shirky: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (for everyone?)
How to: Futuregazing, sustainability and creative content
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