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WHO's Global Report on Urban Health

2016 World Health Organization | Healthcare Government

The World Health Organization and UN–Habitat’s joint report, “Hidden Cities: Unmasking and Overcoming Health Inequities in Urban Settings” was released in 2010. Five years later, technology was rapidly transforming how people consumed content, and important research risked falling through the cracks. Representatives asked Accurat for help in modernizing the report's information design and adapting it for digital formats.

Challenge

Adapt pre–existing research into a technologically advanced, multi–format data narrative.

Solution

A highly engaging work of visual reporting, optimized for print, web, and a global, multilingual audience.

Services

UI, UX, Data visualization, and editorial design; Front–end development

Deliverables

Print report & digital report; Web interactive; Data explorer

Process

Over the course of just six months, we collaborated with WHO’s researchers in Japan to analyze data, design and develop static and interactive visualizations, and handle all activities related to the publication, distribution, and web deployment of The Global Report on Urban Health: a brand new publication with an accompanying online data explorer.

In designing a visual language for both web and print materials, we kept a key subset of the audience top–of–mind: elected and appointed public officials. We sketched styles remniscent of architectural and urban planning diagrams to present information clearly, in a visual vernacular that would resonate with policy makers. Beyond visualizations, we came up with other inventive ways to enrich the reading experience. In both the print and web version of the report, for example, we utilized page margins to add annotations that clarified and/or emphasized text.

Outcome

The full–color, 240–page report was printed in ten languages and distributed across the globe. The same research was made available online as a web experience via a mobile optimized data explorer, retro–compatible with legacy browser technology.

Our print visuals combined four-color and duotone pages, creating the effect of a full-color publication while drastically reducing production costs. To achieve this, the maps and visualizations in the report were designed balancing the use of dual tone patterns, where black ink is paired with a different color in each of the book chapters.

Pages from the book's printed editon.

In the online version of the Digital Executive Summary, tags and keywords on the margins of the webpage are connected by colored lines to passages in the text.

Presented officially in Geneva in March 2016, The Global Report was recognized as an important contribution to the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development that took place in Quito in October of the same year. Scholars and field workers praised the unusual compositions and the richness of Accurat’s data visualizations, which led to a greater–than–average level of interest among policy makers.