Making sense of data is essential to formulating coherent business or public policies in a nation of more than 300 million people and a world with over 6 billion inhabitants.

FORBES: A Guide to Thinking In the Era of Big Data: Nate Silver's "The Signal & The Noise"

But the mechanics of the new acquisition techniques are a doddle compared with the challenge of making sense of the vast amount of data produced.

ECONOMIST: Inside story

Today, the relevance of design is expanding far beyond visual aesthetics -- to everything from tackling global issues such as climate change, to making sense of the overwhelming amount of data that surrounds us.

CNN: How to design a better world

The growth of user generated content for reviews of everything from restaurants to electronics has created a new problem: making sense of all this data, and finding recommendations that are personally relevant.

FORBES: Wikets Rewards You For Your Recommendations To Friends

Inherent in all these games, whether their goal is vanquishing evil elves or raising corn, are the kinds of abilities needed to solve complex problems, including leading and managing, handling logistics and resources, prioritizing tasks, making sense of rapidly changing data and learning from mistakes.

FORBES: Let's Play! Turning Serious Business Issues Into Games

The effort initially mapped reports of violence in Kenya during the post-election fallout in 2008 and has now been used by thousands of people in countries worldwide for making sense of complex real-time data being generated across multiple platforms.

FORBES: How Cloud Computing Can Boost Developing Nations

Faced with the task of studying vast amounts of microbial data gathered from the English Channel, the biologist explored alternative ways of making sense of it all.

ENGADGET: Microbial music: Using sound to represent data from the deep blue sea

The app, meant to be used on the iPads, takes sales data and arranges it in interactive graphs, making it easier for Life Technologies' sales team to make sense of mountains of sales and customer data while on the road.

WSJ: Business Tasks Bring Out Serious Side of Apps