Context
COOLCITY is an EU-funded initiative working with municipalities across Europe to model climate risks and develop targeted adaptation strategies. The platform needed to translate complex geospatial and environmental datasets into tools that non-expert stakeholders could act on.
Challenge
The core tension was between scientific rigour and accessibility. The data was dense, multi-layered, and contested — but the decision-makers using the platform were planners and politicians, not climate scientists. Every design decision had to bridge that gap without oversimplifying.
Role
Lead product designer responsible for the platform’s information architecture, map interface, and reporting flows. Worked with a research team, a GIS specialist, and two front-end engineers across a twelve-month engagement.
Process
Ran co-design workshops with city planners in three pilot municipalities to understand how they currently make adaptation decisions and where data was most lacking. These sessions shaped the platform’s scenario modelling feature — the ability to compare interventions side by side against projected risk.
Iterated on the map layer system through five rounds of prototype testing, progressively reducing cognitive load while preserving the depth of information available on demand.
Selected Screens
Outcome
The platform launched across four pilot cities and is currently being adopted by two additional municipalities. Stakeholder workshops using the scenario modelling tool consistently reduced time-to-decision on adaptation measures by surfacing trade-offs that were previously invisible.
Reflection
Designing with geospatial data at this scale pushed me to think about hierarchy in entirely new ways. The map is never just a backdrop — it is the primary interface. Learning to treat it as such, and to design layers that reveal rather than obscure, was the most demanding and rewarding part of this project.