Building an Open-Access Database for Ocean-Everything

Project and client: Ocean Archive, TBA21, Austria
Timeline: 2019 — 2020, initial UX Research took 6 weeks
My role: UX Researcher and UX/UI Designer at Lucid.Berlin

A digital interface with multiple window overlays, including a large ocean scene with a person walking near a wave, a podcast player, and a colorful abstract image of coral and jellyfish on a blue background.

Open-access digital platform that seamlessly integrates art, science, policy, and conservation, inspiring care and action towards the ocean.

Insights from 50+ interviews and regular co-creation workshops shaped design and functionality.

Project scope

The scope of this project was to create the biggest ocean-related online depository with emphasis on both serendipitous and context-related user experience. The platform would bring together art, science, policy, and conservation and enable users to explore a wealth of ocean knowledge and share their own experiences and stories.

Goal: Create seamless user experience and integrating diverse content from art, science, policy, and conservation to facilitate exploration and sharing.

Research focus

  1. Creating a seamless user experience for a platform with vast content diversity without extensive onboarding.

  2. Ensuring content creators have ample opportunities to add context to their entries.

  3. Managing a large volume of diverse content and facilitating multidisciplinarity.

  4. Ensuring equal usability across different user expertise levels without oversimplification or academic overload.

  5. Developing a sorting tool for personalized user experiences within the archive.

Research setup

Illustration of a black and white cat lying on a yellow background comically peeking over a bicycle wheel.

Data Analysis

Conducted comprehensive stakeholder analysis and analyzed content for potential onboarding challenges.

A black cat's head peeking out of a white coffee mug with a tea bag tag hanging over the side, set against a green background.

Co-Creation

Held regular co-creation meetings and workshops with experts and professionals, from art, science and academia.

Black laptop with an empty screen on a pink background.

UX Testing

Conducted A/B testing of essential elements and iterated based on feedback. Explored diverse user journeys from exploration to serendipity concept.

Insights and Development

One of the key insights was the need to embrace multidisciplinarity, where users with different levels of knowledge and expertise can navigate the platform with ease. To address this, the research team developed a focus-based system that aggregates content from various backgrounds and enables users to set up their preferences for a personalized search path.

We were able to provide a personalized user experience that combined and aggregated content from various backgrounds. This resulted in a seamless user experience on a platform with potentially millions of entries of different contents that did not require comprehensive onboarding for the user.

Internally we called this feature “Bubble”, besides the regular search option we created unique system, that allows the user to select position of their interest within the “bubble” feature on both desktop and mobile version. Additionally, user can add additional tags of interest, which results in sorting mechanism and suggestions, rather than filtering.

This feature also enabled various content creators, scientists, artists, and institutions to have nearly limitless possibilities to add context to their entries in the back end without limitations or creating new tags. We tackled challenges such as dealing with a huge amount of diverse content, taxonomy, multidisciplinarity, and providing a user-friendly experience concept for a wide range of audiences, from experts to enthusiasts in ocean-related topics.

Venn diagram with four overlapping circles labeled Entertainment, Research, Science, and Art, with blue dots inside each circle
Photograph of Skye Moret, a woman in outdoor gear, holding a camera, with a backpack, standing in a cold environment. Accompanying text describes her as a senior researcher, design strategist, and explorer of ocean and jungle locations.
Digital interface screen showing categories related to ocean topics, including ocean art, science, action, and governance, with a colorful coral reef graphic and a selection of keywords such as activism, biodiversity, industry, climate change, and more.
Group of ten men, some in military uniforms and others in suits, on the deck of a ship, with a large winch and ship rigging in the background. The photo is labeled 'NOC - Discovery Oceanographic Expedition.'
Screenshot of a digital presentation slide showing black and white images and information about the RRS Discovery Expedition of 1925, highlighting contributions from the National Oceanography Centre and photographs of crabs.
Color-coded 3D relief map of deep ocean trenches, seafloor features, and underwater topography, focusing on the Pacific Ocean region.
Screenshot of a scientific article titled 'Plastic Accumulation in the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre', discussing plastic marine pollution, its scope, and impact in the North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean.
Music album cover for 'Dark Morph' by BANI MANUMANU, released in 2015, featuring a sound wave graphic.

Research and Design impact

Placeholder image indicating no image available

Multidisciplinarity

Comprehensive research and co-creation with different experts helped us bring the best experience for a diverse group of users and their interests.

Web browser window with a black cat icon and text content on a green background.

Taxonomy

Dynamic tagging system for creators that allows full flexibility to provide the right context to their content, enabling uploads of over 2+ photos, videos, texts, and audios.

Cartoon black cat with glasses on a pink background.

Sorting system

Creating an interactive sorting system that functions as an onboarding tool for newcomers to the website, resulting in a 60% reduction in user dropdown.

Disclaimer

All images and materials in this case study belong to Ocean Archive, managed by TBA21. My role as an employee of the contractor of Ocean Archive was to showcase my skills, and no sensitive data or confidential information was used. The information and visuals provided were created for presentation purposes only, using placeholder data and photos generated by Midjourney AI and initial concept art that was not implemented in final product. This case study does not reflect the views or opinions of Ocean Archive or TBA21.