New web app from Gapminder will help us dismantling common misconceptions of the world
Antrop is working with Gapminder, with Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Ola Rosling, on an important and exciting project. We are developing a web app that will help users dismantling common misconceptions about the global development. This is done by helping them get at a fact-based world view.
Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund from Gapminder / Photo: Jann Lipka
The Gapminder Foundation was founded by Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Ola Rosling together with Hans Rosling in 2005. The foundation has since then been working to spread a fact-based worldview. Their way to do that is to make statistics and data more accessible and easier to understand, to provide more people with better knowledge of the world we live in. They are focusing on social, environmental, and economic global questions. To make the right decisions in these globalized times we have to have a worldview based on facts. This goes for politicians, companies, citizens, and you.
A Digital extension of Gapminder’s work
The web app now being developed goes by the name ´Gapminder Common Misconceptions´. It is an interactive tool and a digital extension of the work Gapminder does. Just as in the bestselling book Factfulness, (Natur & Kultur, 2018), written by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, and Hans Rosling, Gapminder’s web app is about showing users how we are completely wrong about many global trends and proportions.
– By becoming aware of our ignorance, we can learn to be more careful before we claim to have knowledge of things without checking the facts first, Anna Rosling Rönnlund says.
New web app with questions that help you get your facts about the world straight.
By becoming aware of our ignorance, we can learn to be more careful before we claim to have knowledge of things without checking the facts first.
Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Gapminder
Check your knowledge about the world
The web app user will be able to test his or her knowledge by answering questions, such as: how many countries have a female head of state, and, how much of all the plastic that is produced in the world ends up in the sea.
The user most likely, just like most of us, is wrong in many cases. Hopefully, the user will be curious to update his or her knowledge on the subject.
Close collaboration during the whole project
The collaboration with Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Ola Rosling has been close during the whole project developing the web app.
– We have been working closely with Antrop, and Ola and I have been deeply involved when it comes to the user experience. We have had great benefit from Antrop’s expertise regarding user needs, UX, and design, Anna Rosling Rönnlund says.
How did Antrop work in this project?
Michel Adamek is a Senior UX Designer at Antrop.
– We began by interviewing the target group. Then we prototyped, user-tested, iterated and tested again, he says.
He has been working with this project from the start together with a team from Antrop including Project Manager Kat Spongberg, Service Designer Jenny Dannstedt, and the Visual Designers Kristin Guzman and Åsa Hammarström.
This project with Gapminder is a perfect example of how we choose our collaborations at Antrop.
– Our vision is to design for ecological, social, and economic sustainability. In this collaboration, we are working with a focus on the UN’s global goals for sustainable development, Michel Adamek says.
Has this project changed your world view?
– Absolutely! It has become clear to me how often we are wrong, and how much igonarance there is. And what a dated comprehension of the global development many of us have. When you are presented with reports and facts it becomes painfully clear that so many of us have an incorrect view of the world. Even Nobel Prize winners, says Michel Adamek.
Facts: Gapminder's new web app
The web app 'Gapminder Common Misconceptions' will be free of charge and initially launched in English. The release date is in October 2020. The User Experience is designed by Antrop and our friends at Prototyp is developing the web app.
