Objective

MultiLateral monitors, analyses and assesses global trade flows: imports, exports, historical movement and forward projections, weighted by macroeconomic and political risk.

Products like this fail on explanation rather than engineering. A platform offering seven dashboard types, selectable commodity aggregation and thirteen named economic indices is useless to a trade finance professional who cannot work out which one answers their question.

Creative response

Co-author and designer of the product documentation, with a Coriolis colleague. The work was structuring the product's own logic into something a user could navigate.

• Getting Started with MultiLateral. The product's introductory documentation, defining what it does and how to access it
• The dashboard taxonomy. Seven types documented and differentiated: Country, Region (with intra- and extra-region trade), Sector, Supply Chain, Dual Use, Trade Indicators and Country Indicator
• The shared control model. Commodity type, level of commodity aggregation, annual or monthly data, and timeframe, explained once and applied across all seven
• The indicator layer. Thirteen published indices including Hirschman Herfindahl, Hall-Tideman, Export Diversification, Trade Openness and four Hummels-Klenow margin measures
• Design and layout. Produced in InDesign alongside a captured screenshot library

• Getting Started with MultiLateral. The product's introductory documentation, defining what it does and how to access it
• The dashboard taxonomy. Seven types documented and differentiated: Country, Region (with intra- and extra-region trade), Sector, Supply Chain, Dual Use, Trade Indicators and Country Indicator
• The shared control model. Commodity type, level of commodity aggregation, annual or monthly data, and timeframe, explained once and applied across all seven
• The indicator layer. Thirteen published indices including Hirschman Herfindahl, Hall-Tideman, Export Diversification, Trade Openness and four Hummels-Klenow margin measures
• Design and layout. Produced in InDesign alongside a captured screenshot library

Results

1992–2021, data coverage, plus projections

The product itself covers trade indicators from 1992 to 2021 with projections running past 2025, multi-select across reporters from ASEAN to individual countries, and currency switching.

The distinction between Hummels-Klenow intensive and extensive margins, whether export growth is deepening existing relationships or opening new ones, is the kind of measure that only survives into a product when someone insists on it.

Watch

The work