NZZ and Interactive Things realised web publication about Fukushima together

During the first two weeks of March 2013, Interactive Things and the Swiss newspaper “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” (NZZ) collaborated on a web publication about the Fukushima nuclear disaster that took place in Japan in 2011. The reporter Marcel Gyr and photographer Christoph Bangert revisited the same people they met two years earlier and interviewed them again to hear their personal accounts on how their lives have changed during that time.

The task of Interactive Things (IXT) was to create an online reading experience to present the long form text, the photos and the video footage in a sincere but pleasant way. To support the readers in their understanding of the text, IXT created several visualizations to clarify and point out important facts.

The visualizations for the different parts of the text served the purpose of giving more depth to the topics. For example in the chapter about radiation, the measuring units micro- and millisievert are mentioned. Here the IXT team wanted to explain what these units measure without going into too much technical detail. The aim with this specific visualization was to show the amount of radiation that is mentioned in the text and compare it to places and situations that we are exposed to during our everyday lives. There are a lot of other vizualisations, e.g. showing the extent of evacuation or areas currently contaminated.

The final result of the collaboration is an interactive web online publication that is developed with a large focus on the reading experience and enhancing aspects of storytelling by using interactive features. The publication has a responsive UI which enables the reader to read the content on various devices such as a smartphones, desktop browsers and tablets. The look and feel of the publication should convey a certain calmness and let the reader take his/her time when viewing it.

A description of the project can be found at datavizualisation.ch