Data visualization is a powerful method to illustrate the current state as well as future visions of climate change. However, the combination of advanced scientific topics and data makes the design process of creating these visualizations particularly challenging for both domain experts (e.g., climate scientists) and designers. The former might struggle finding the appropriate tone and communication register when building visualizations. The latter might fail in translating difficult scientific concepts and data into appropriate visuals. The ideal solution to this problem is collaboration, but interdisciplinary work across these two domains can prove difficult, due to methodological differences. In this paper I put forward a collaboration model to help information designers co-creating climate visualizations with domain experts. The approach builds on Müller’s concept of ``Tandem”, where only one visualization designer and one domain expert closely collaborate in the core design phase of a climate visualization project. This concept is useful, because it highlights the importance of maintaining structured co-design practices, but also limited, because it does not have sufficient theoretical and empirical evidence of its usefulness and applicability. In this position paper, I will take the first step towards enriching the Tandem model. Drawing on previous HCI and visualization research, I argue that Tandems hold potential to address three issues related to climate visualization projects, namely ownership, simplification, and creative lock-ins.
