Helping the New Zealand Aid Programme learn what makes its agriculture projects successful
New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) manages the New Zealand Aid Programme. This programme provides New Zealand’s aid to the Pacific, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and supports development in areas like health, education, infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries and the environment.
Agriculture Activity Insights is one of the best examples of information design we have seen. We wouldn’t hesitate to use this document as an example of effective plain technical writing.
WriteMark Plain English Awards Trust
MFAT wanted to re-examine its agriculture work, but on a much larger scale
In 2019, MFAT commissioned Capire to analyse a sample of reports and independent evaluations about 50 of its agriculture projects. The analysis generated some useful insights into what makes agriculture activities successful.
Agricultural Activity Insights proved so popular with MFAT’s staff that it published the document and, in 2022, decided to repeat the exercise on a much larger scale.
Between 2019 and 2021, the New Zealand Aid Programme financed 93 agriculture projects. The second edition of Agricultural Activity Insights draws insights from 257 reports about these projects – that’s over 5000 pages of information! The publication synthesises all that rich data into 31 pages.
MFAT wanted to know the most common factors that enable or hinder its agriculture projects
Every project is unique, and the circumstances in which projects are implemented vary significantly. However, MFAT knows from its previous analysis that there are some common themes.
MFAT asked Capire to extract these themes from its reports, and identify the most common factors that enable or hinder agriculture activities achieving their outcomes. Knowing this helps MFAT understand which factors are critical for projects to succeed and make a difference to people’s lives.
From the reports, Capire was able to identify 88 success and risk factors that MFAT’s project managers and partners consistently say affect the performance of agriculture activities. Drawing on the factors that occur most frequently, we presented MFAT with 18 lessons it can learn from and use in its work.
Capire uses data-visualisation techniques to help readers grasp key messages quickly
Having data on over 90 projects meant Capire could confidently use quantitative methods to present our findings. We chose to use single numbers and lollipop charts to highlight the most common success and risk factors we wanted readers to remember.
We also used aligned colours in chart titles and chart content instead of a key or ‘legend’, to keep our readers focused on the chart and save space on the page.
Agriculture Activity Insights won the 2023 Best Plain Language Technical Communicator Award
In 2023, the WriteMark Plain English Awards Trust awarded Capire the Best Plain Language Technical Communicator Award, predominantly for writing Agriculture Activity Insights.
The judges said: “Agriculture Activity Insights is one of the best examples of information design we have seen. We wouldn’t hesitate to use this document as an example of effective plain technical writing.”
The report is very reader-friendly, and has a professional, clear, approachable and straightforward tone that engages with the audience and enables them to apply the information. … We like the use of statistical infographics throughout the report to clarify its main points.
WriteMark Plain English Awards Trust
Winning this award means a huge amount to Capire. It acknowledges our commitment to plain language and how that benefits people who read our technical communications.
