While this page is under construction, you are welcome to browse the following work in progress.

Let's Remineralize! is an environmental education product.

THE PROJECT

Remineralize the Earth (RTE) is a nonprofit with a mission to "promote the use of natural land and sea-based minerals to restore soils and forests, produce more nutritious food, and remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere." I joined RTE to help design "Let's Remineralize!" - a module that teachers and homeschoolers can supplement into their science curriculums to teach their students how to conduct experiments with rock dust.

Through working with RTE's executive director, we came to understand that the solution needed to include:

A style and flow that would inspire visitors to participate in the Let's Remineralize! module.
An interactive GIS map where visitors can see relevant projects submitted by others from around the world.
An engaging form where participants could share the results of their projects in way that could be useful for themselves and others.

WIREFRAME

MAP / LESSON PLAN RELATIONSHIP

The lesson plan directory would be a a field of CTAs that would initiate visitors into starting a lesson plan. When I interviewed the Executive Director about classes that had already completed remineralization experiments and imagined with her the sort of people who would use this site to start experimenting, we discovered a few things:

Visitors to the site would include teachers who still needed to be convinced to participate in a project. The map would serve as an implicit testimonial that someone else found the project useful.
The target teachers had demonstrated interest in communal and intersectional learning. The map served as a way to introduce classes from across the world to one another and facilitate co-learning.
The map could introduce students to citizen research. A unique value proposition of Let's Remineralize! is that it offers a way for classes to contribute information to the collective about sources of rock dust and how different dusts interact with different plants.

Grouping the map near the lesson plans underscored that their participation entered them into a community.

CONTENT ORDER

We implemented an intentional strategy on the type of content we shared and how we ordered it:

Allow return visitors to jump right into their intended module.
Sell prospective participants on the benefits of remineralization.
Assure visitors that acquiring rock dust isn't an obstacle with various resources on how to acquire rock dust.
Go for the final sell with the map/lesson directory combo.

HOMEPAGE

I arrived at a design that courts first-time viewers into participating in a remineralization project, whilst allowing returning users to jump to the section that is most relevant to them.

HOMEWORK

I wanted to design transitions that will keep teachers feeling that they are actively progressing along the survey without overwhelming them.

EXPERIMENT RESULTS

When a class completes their homework which documents the results of their experiment, a custom page is created that shares their results with the world.

PROJECT STATUS

This project has given me experience working with a broad team in a nimble organization. I worked directly with the nonprofit's executive director, a front-end and a back-end engineer, a GIS map expert, and several content creators. As these are all volunteer positions, people are working in their spare time and this project is still in development.

Please continue to check back on this project as more will be added when it comes to a close.

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