Our Eco‑Logbook is an interactive data‑visualisation platform developed to empower children’s environmental action within schools. It was co-designed working with seven children aged 9–11 from a primary school in Oxfordshire, involving interviews, workshops, brainstorming activities, and iterative prototyping. The Eco‑Logbook was later extended through a Knowledge Exchange partnership with Keep Britain Tidy, working with six additional schools across England to refine its design, broaden its accessibility, and support child‑led environmental action at a national scale. 

The design process unfolded across four phases—framing, ideation, prototyping, and evaluation—each centred on participatory design methods that scaffolded children’s agency in defining environmental problems, shaping eco‑campaign ideas, and imagining how data could support action. In this design-oriented research we asked how interactive data visualisation (IDV) could meaningfully support collective climate action in school communities. 

Children explored sustainability domains including marine life, biodiversity, and litter, generating environmental objectives such as reducing food waste (“No Fishy Fridays”), improving habitats for wildlife, and tackling school litter. They investigated which data could be collected, how it should be visualised, and how it could be used to inform or persuade others in their community.  

Our research found that, through IDV, children developed critical skills related to setting environmental objectives, interpreting data, and prioritising actions. They engaged in discovery, using visualisations to identify strengths and weaknesses within their school’s environmental review; they explored actionability, using participation charts to strategise how to involve classmates, families, and staff; and they articulated strong feelings of ownership and accountability when seeing their own contributions represented in the tool. These insights extend existing theoretical frameworks by identifying a new “valence” of data linked to children’s sense of environmental responsibility. 

The research also revealed important tensions. Children recognised that many impactful actions required cooperation or approval from adults, and that some forms of environmental action—such as changes to school food procurement—were interpreted as more disruptive and therefore more difficult to advance. The study highlights the ethical implications of visualising participation and action: while IDV can motivate, persuade, and legitimise children’s efforts, it also risks undermining constructive hope where structural barriers prevent meaningful change. These findings demonstrate that the success of IDV depends not only on design quality, but on adult support and an enabling school culture.