Everyday Low Pixels, II

A big project (big for a small business like mine, anyway) that I worked with Wal-Mart's sustainability team to create launched today. Sustainability: Starting the Journey is a Flash 8 sitelet designed to help clarify the global retailer's environmental and business sustainability initiatives and to set the baseline for the energy consumption and carbon emissions metrics that they will be reporting on over the coming years.

The site launched in conjunction with The Carbon Diclosure Project's 4th Annual Report meeting held on Monday at the New York offices of Merrill Lynch. At this meeting, the CDP announced several milestones in businesses becoming more transparent in their reporting of carbon emissions:

• This year's report saw the highest-ever response rate, with 72%, or 360 of the FT500 companies responding, up from 47% of the companies that responded when CDP first surveyed the FT500 in 2003.
• Several major US companies responded for the first time to CDP's request for information, including American Express, Boeing, Home Depot, Disney and Wal-Mart.
• 87% of responding companies indicated climate change represented "commercial risks and/or opportunities".

As for the Wal-Mart project I and the Wal-Mart team developed, it is intended to convey three main messages:

1. The first is to show to all interested audiences that Wal-Mart recognizes the importance of minimizing carbon emissions as a step towards mitigating massive climate change, and further recognizes the leadership role Wal-Mart can play in influencing other businesses to act similarly.
2. Secondly, the site is intended to convey the complexities of the Wal-Mart global supply chain in the clearest manner possible and illustrate where the company has already identified carbon reduction opportunities across that supply chain.
3. Third, the site illustrates clearly the actual measure of carbon emissions by Wal-Mart globally for the year 2005.

In designing this site, my personal goal was to come up with a way of making the massive data sets come to life, and to literally "show" information in such a way that viewers "get it" long before they even have to think about it.

I pulled several pages from my own upcoming book on "thinking with pictures" to find ways to meet this goal. Among other things, we've included both '3D' and '2D' visualizations of the same complex metrics, the first to help viewers immediately get a sense of the scale and global location of emissions, and the second to provide an immediate side-by-side comparison of various country metrics.

Now that we've got this starting point launched, Wal-Mart and I are discussing possible future versions of the site that might include ways to monitor ongoing carbon measurements and report them over time, as well as ways to increase the interactivity of the supply-chain model, perhaps to even allow for the viewer to see what the emissions impact might be of changing certain supply-chain variables.

If anybody has any comments on how to improve the sitelet, please feel free to share them here. It's both too easy and too hard to criticize one's own work, so if anybody sees something that could benefit from a change (or even a total re-think), I'd appreciate heating about it.

Getting this little site out the door has been a far bigger task than anybody involved first anticipated, and all credit goes to the Wal-Mart team: Brian Kaufman for relentless cheer-leading and keeping the project moving ahead at all times, Serena Green, for handling the countless technical challenges we faced, Felicia Saenz for pursuing perfection and accuracy in the numbers regardless of difficulty, Tyler Elm for keeping us motivated and on-track (and accurate), Harriet Hentges for providing executive support, and Andy Ruben for recognizing the need to make this project happen. Also huge thanks to Thaniya Keereepart for the Flash production: it was worth the ocassional pain.

Comments

[viagra stories]

Very nice. Great story

[Patrick Wood]

I am sincerely impressed by your Wal-Mart Sustainability website, and by the commitment that it appears Wal-Mart is making. With the website you have done a great job of "literally 'show'ing information in such a way that viewers "get it" long before they even have to think about it."

One thing that many viewers may not get if not informed is the trade-offs of some of the action by Wal-Mart. For example the data on the energy layer of the website is impressive showing the benefits of using CFL blubs. One metric that is not included here is the amount of mercury that would be required to make all those bulbs.

We all have conflicts. Transparency is a key aspect of environmental accounting. Showing more of the whole picture would add to the integrity of Wal-Marts actions.

[Iris]

Gear up for grub with a tripleheader of pigskin, including a meeting of brothers in Dallas. Everybody knows it's been a rough year for her, but find out who else had issues

[Dan]

Good point G,

I've seen the Wal-Mart movie you mention, as well as visited Wal-Mart HQ alongside Al Gore, Lawrence Bender (producer of all Tarantino's films), reps from Conservation International, EPA, WWF and NRDC. From an environmental perspective, everyone came away quite convinced that the sustainability moves are real, and will have a tremendous positive impact when fully implemented.
I also recognize that many of the activities of a business the size of Wal-Mart don't stand up well to scrutiny. My personal experience thus far indicates that WM is doing many of the right things from an environmental perspective, and if I can do anything to support them in that undertaking, I'm commited to doing so.
Thanks for checking in,
Dan

[g]

hi guys,

it might help humanity to check out how the companies you work for do behave in reality -

http://www.walmartmovie.com/

looks good anyway, but it would be great to have people like you on the 'other' side -

best,

g

[Xavier]

And one more thing -

Conversely, when within an individual layer, when you mouseover a greyed-out button, it should highlight the corresponding layer on the right hand side.

This may be clear already from the previous comments - but I remembered that this was something I was trying to do when navigating through the site.

xavier

[Dan]

Thanks X, I knew you'd come through with great comments. I appreciate it -- I'll make those changes in the next version!

[Xavier]

Dan,

Great job! I like the layered view, and the 3D/2D views.

A couple of minor suggestions:

1) Reinforce linkage between the overall landscape and the layers

On the page "Take a tour of the layers of sustainability..."

a) in a smooth animation, place the numbers 1-7 one by one on the landscape, highlighting the right hand nav at the same time (and display the corresponding numbers)

and/or

b) when you mouseover the right hand side, highlight the appropriate items on the landscape (and display the number)

I think this would give slightly more intuitive guidance on how the whole thing fits together.

2) add "Overview" link to metrics views

e.g. under Logistics -> View metrics

I would like to see "Back" or "Overview" on the top navigation (to the left of "Efficiency Metrics") - instead of having to hunt for it over to the bottom right (esp. since the location of the back button has shifted), or figuring out that I should click "Logistics" to go back to the main view.

xavier