The Narrative Directory
User research, product strategy, design and development of “The Narrative Directory”: a mapping tool and search archive connecting activists, journalists, researchers, and funders across the global narrative-change field. Built for IRIS (International Resource for Impact and Storytelling), a Ford Foundation-backed funder collaborative, now in active use by organizations focussed on impact work in the Global South.
Making a field legible
The project was a deep dive into data modeling and taxonomy: mining, cleaning and categorizing a sprawling dataset across organizations, roles, focus areas, geographies and relationships. We developed a flexible ontology that could accommodate the ambiguity and overlap inherent to the field, then translated it into an information architecture that powers the Directory’s search, faceted navigation, entity profiles and geographic map.
