Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center
My Role: UX Designer and Developer
Date: 2018
Partners: UW Climate Impacts Group, UW EarthLab
About
The Department of Interior’s Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (NWCASC) is a federal-university partnership focused on safeguarding natural and cultural resources in the Northwest states. They provide funding to (federal and university) partner organizations for fellowships, conferences, and training surrounding climate change adaptation. They came to our team and asked for a website, since the Climate Impacts Group and EarthLab had won the grant to house the center.
Goals
- Build a new website hosted at the University of Washington that demonstrates the complex brand hierarchy of multiple partners and hosts
- Define to a lay audience what the NWCASC is and its benefits
- Showcase projects and research catalyzed by the NWCASC in a politically neutral way
- Build the site on a tight timeline for a Federal review
Process
- We worked with our partners at the Climate Impacts Group and EarthLab to determine the complicated hierarchy of brands.
- I interviewed NWCASC fellows and staff to find site priorities.
- We mapped an information architecture to show the NWCASC’s different programs.
- I presented design comps to NWCASC staff and revise based on branding goals.
- I developed the site on a tight timeline.
Competitor Analysis
Since there are 8 other Climate Adaptation Science Centers across the country, we looked at their sites for inspiration. What seemed to work for them, and what would work best for NWCASC.
Sketching
As a quick project, I did an abbreviated user experience process, and focused more on the visual design and branding of the center. I considered different homepage layouts, and decided to stick to a standard interior page for most content.
Results
Visual Design and Branding
I focused the visual design on blending the UW’s strong purple with blue, to show how the center is hosted and staffed by UW, but isn’t totally a university department. The blend also speaks to the change that the center is focused on.
User Experience Design
From sketching and talking to research staff that use the other CASC websites, we determined it was important to have an announcement widget to give a quick link to watch the webinars. We included an area on “What we do” that serves as quick links to the most popular pages and a quick explanation of what the center does to a lay audience.
Development Notes
Since this was a site with a tight deadline I generally used templates and tools off the shelf. To facilitate a faster import of projects, our team worked on a tool that would automatically fetch project data from the USGS site.
