We are happy to announce Krisztina Szucs and Mate Cziner as the winners of our OECD Visualization Challenge for their project, Economic Returns on Education.

Alongside the publication of their important and data-rich Education at a Glance report, we partnered with OECD in challenging designers to visualize a selection of the report’s data. The selected data focused on the economic costs and return on investment in education — both for the individual and for society. See all of the projects tackling the data in the challenge gallery!

The interactive project by Szucs and Cziner does a great job of breaking down the complex interplay between costs and returns into a form that is easy to compare. It takes a detailed look at public vs. private and men vs. women for three selected countries, which you can change.

The judges were particularly impressed by the angled slope format of the visualization, which encourages comparison between the upper-secondary and tertiary benefits of education. This approach brought out very interesting aspects of the data that hadn’t been visualized in the OECD’s own graphs. Szucs and Cziner were also lauded for their striking visual design, which draws users into exploring their piece. 

Szucs and Cziner will receive $2500, and one of them will be invited to attend this year’s OECD Forum, taking place in Paris in May.

The judges also awarded an honorable mention to That’s Edu, by Carlo Zapponi, for its friendly design and intuitive interface.  

Thank you to the OECD, all our judges (Simon Rogers, Anthony Gooch, and Andreas Schleicher), and everyone who participated!