Object details
| Designer / Studio | Si Zheng |
| Country | China |
| Format | Interactive data documentary: scrollytelling story and explorable 2D/3D archive |
| Award | EPDA 2026 Best in Communication; Top Design, Information & Data Design: Data Visualization |
| Explore the design | adecadeofrain.sizheng.me |
Some events are too large and too slow to see. Between 1961 and 1971, herbicides were sprayed over Vietnam for a decade, and their effects spread through land, water and bodies long after the aircraft left.
A Decade of Rain, an interactive data documentary by designer Si Zheng, sets out to make that history legible. It received the Best in Communication prize at the 2026 European Product Design Award.
The project unfolds in two movements. The first is a scrolling story that follows the chemicals from aircraft to ecosystems to human health, told through animated maps and primary sources.
The second is an open archive. Declassified spray records become an explorable map in two and three dimensions. Readers can play the timeline, filter by chemical agent, and open the original record behind every point.
That structure is the design’s real achievement. It holds two scales at once: the sweep of ten years across a whole country, and the single field beneath a single flight path. Each scale gives the other its meaning.
Data visualisation is often asked to simplify. A Decade of Rain does something harder, letting the reader move between the overview and the evidence without losing either.
View A Decade of Rain on the European Product Design Award winner’s page →
Image: Si Zheng.
