I pitched and lead the redesign of Airwars’ public archive of civilian casualty allegations and related military claims.

The exercise ran over one year and involved working with every member of the Airwars team as the organisation transitioned from unstructured research documents to a structured, searchable and accessible database. The project put online hundreds of unpublished geolocations, images and videos from local sources. Additionally, it enabled live data visualisations, transforming not just how Airwars publicly communicated its findings, but the organisation’s ability to recognise patterns and anomalies in its own data.

While the backend of the database was designed to be highly structured, the frontend focused on the qualitative narration of events, visuals, and the naming of victims. For the first time, local allegations of civilian harm were displayed alongside related belligerent strike reports and casualty assessments.

The archive was designed to preserve the ambiguities of real-world, “muddy” data. For example, fields were designed to accommodate multiple types and formats of data.

The work was realised through a close and sustained collaboration with Rectangle, an external design and web development studio.