For this contest, I intentionally chose an education-focused approach, designing a dashboard for children rather than a traditional executive audience. Much of my professional work centers on complex, leadership-level analytics, so this project challenged me to do something different: simplify data without oversimplifying the story it tells.
The goal was to help children explore data through curiosity and discovery, focusing less on technical details like axes and labels and more on recognizing relationships between carbon emissions, temperature change, and sea level rise. By guiding users to ask questions and notice patterns, TRACE aims to spark meaningful conversations about how data connects to real-world impact.
I approached this project through the lens of public and community education, using child-friendly design to make climate data approachable, engaging, and fun to explore. While there is much more I would love to add, I’m grateful for the opportunity to participate and to see the creativity and thoughtfulness reflected across all of the submitted dashboards.
About the Dashboard:
TRACE (Temperature, Rise and Carbon Emissions Dashboard) is an interactive learning dashboard concept designed to help kids explore how our planet is changing through data. The project focuses on making complex climate information simple, visual, and accessible, allowing learners to experiment with real datasets and discover relationships between three connected climate signals: carbon emissions, global temperature, and sea level rise.
TRACE is both a learning experience for children and an exercise in clear communication for the broader community. By turning large, global datasets into intuitive visuals and guided questions, the dashboard encourages curiosity, pattern-spotting, and an early understanding of how human actions and environmental impacts are connected over time.
