As climate risks intensify, individuals, communities, governments, and organizations are increasingly turning to digital tools, maps, dashboards, and other climate adaptation products to understand risk and prepare for a changing climate.
Many of these products have been developed by scientists or developers using sophisticated climate science and available data. But in some cases, more information has not always led to better decisions, as this supply-driven model for developing these products can lead to a usability gap: a mismatch between the information the products provide and what people actually need to apply the information and make informed decisions.
A newly published Nature systematic review seeks to help close that gap. Led by Energy and Resources Group (ERG) PhD candidateNabig A. Chaudhry, the study examines how climate adaptation products can better reflect the needs, priorities, and real-world decision contexts of the people they are designed to serve.
“Climate adaptation products can better support decision-making when they are built around the people and decisions they are meant to serve,” said Chaudhry. “Our review shows that integrating user-centered design with co-production can give researchers and developers a more practical path for building products that are notonly scientifically credible, but also useful, usable, and used.”
Co-authors on the study are ERG faculty members David Anthoff and Andrew D. Jones and William D. Collins, professor in residence in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science and Director of the Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
For the review, the authors examined literature on co-production, a collaborative approach widely used in climate services, and user-centered design, an approach from human-computer interaction commonly used to develop digital and software-based products. Their analysis identified key processes, mechanisms, and best practices from both approaches and mapped how they can work together.
The study also compared two specific climate adaption products as examples: the US-based Strategic Conservation Assessment (SCA) Tool, a data-driven geospatial planning framework designed to help conservation managers, agencies, and stakeholders identify high-value land conservation opportunities; and Project Ukko, a seasonal wind-speed forecasting tool built for energy traders, wind farm managers, and professionals in the wind energy sector for whom it would be useful to have predictions of wind conditions months ahead of time.
The authors found that user-centered design can strengthen co-production by providing more structured ways to understand user needs, define requirements, prototype solutions, test usability, and evaluate product performance. They propose an integrated framework that allows developers to apply user-centered design selectively at different stages of co-production or embed a full user-centered design process within product development.
The authors say their findings are especially relevant for digital and software-based climate adaptation products, which must help users interpret complex climate information, navigate uncertainty, and make decisions under changing conditions.
Read the full study in Nature.