Navigating as Learning. Making sense of systemic complexity through interactive visual interfaces for public administrators.

The complex and urgent challenge of achieving climate neutrality necessitates systemic understanding and changes, yet public administrators of cities face not only environmental and technological challenges, but also an overwhelming deluge of fragmented information. This information overabundance, typical of systemic design contexts, obstructs strategic action and understanding. To address this, we developed and tested a set of interconnected interactive visualizations, grounded in a conceptual model of the urban system and a dynamic view of the city’s green transition. These tools aim to support learning about urban green transition complexity among public and private sector professionals. They were designed using visual and interactive mechanisms inspired by the principles of “effortful engagement” and “desirable difficulty.” We interpret users’ meaningful navigation as a learning practice that helps organize information complexity by building internal structures of interconnected elements. Interactive visualizations can reduce extraneous cognitive load by visually structuring information and revealing details on demand. Grounded in theories of learning, as well as interface and information design, the paper demonstrates that leveraging visual affordances and cues significantly enhances contextual awareness and understanding across disciplines, reduces information overload, engages users in meaningful learning efforts, and facilitates more experiential learning. Building on insights from user testing with public administrators, the study proposes a set of guidelines specific to systemic design. Ultimately, this work positions interface and visualization design as a strategic enabler of learning in systemic transitions, offering a new paradigm for how professional users (including public administrators) can navigate complexity to competently plan sustainable futures.