NIWA · 2020
873 researchers, 87 projects, one place where everything connects.
The Deep South Challenge was producing climate research for everyone from dairy farmers to city councils, but none of it had a home online. I built the platform that connects all of it.
The research existed. Nobody could find it.
The Deep South Challenge is a $24 million climate science programme hosted by NIWA: 873 researchers working across 87 projects, publishing resources for everyone from dairy farmers to city councils.
None of it had a home online. The people the research was funded for had no way to find what applied to them, and no way to see who was working on what. For a public programme of this size, that’s not a small gap.
What we built
A custom platform modelled on the programme itself: ten content types whose relationships can be followed from either end, so every researcher, project, and resource leads to the others.
- Ten content types, one model
- Researchers, projects, resources, audiences: ten content types in all, each modelled on how the programme actually runs rather than flattened into a pile of pages.
- A frontend true to the design
- The Challenge had its own designer, and I worked with them throughout the build. The site that went live matches their design, down to the details.
- A view for every audience
- Dairy farmers and city councils need different things from the same programme. Each audience gets its own page with the projects, champions, and themes relevant to them.
- Editing without the busywork
- Adding a resource is a form, not a project. The team fills in the details, tags the project it belongs to, and every related page picks it up on its own.
The result
The whole programme is public at deepsouthchallenge.co.nz. A researcher, a project, or a resource is never more than a couple of clicks from everything related to it.
- $24 million of research with no home online
- The whole programme, public in one place
- No way to see who was working on what
- Pick a researcher, see their projects and resources
- Every reader handed the same pile
- Farmers and councils each see what’s theirs
- New publications with nowhere to land
- New content slots into the web automatically
Need a home for your organisation’s work?
If your projects, people, and publications are scattered or offline, I can help you work out what a site for them would look like.