Sector(s)
Team Members
Project Team
- John Cionci — Senior UX Engineer (johncionci)
- Kaleem Clarkson — UX Engineer ((kclarkson)
- Ben Hamelin — Drupal Engineer (benhamelin)
- Jack Hartman — Project Manager
- J. Hogue — Director of Design & UX (artinruins)
- Renáta Miles — UI Designer (renatamiles)
- John Picozzi — Senior Drupal Architect (johnpicozzi)
- Josh Stewart — UX Engineer (joshstewart)
For nearly 50 years, Earthwatch has been at the forefront of the environmental movement, empowering individuals to take collective action through scientific research and conservation. In research locations around the world, Earthwatch fills a unique niche—it provides an outlet for people from all walks of life to study and conserve the natural world.
Transform the Experience
The core Earthwatch experience happens outdoors in the form of an expedition — usually for about a week and far away from technology in locations like the Amazon Basin, Uganda, or the Great Barrier Reef. But before this in-person experience happens, an expedition volunteer encounters a dizzying array of digital touchpoints that can sow confusion and lead to distrust. Earthwatch needed “Experience Transformation.”
About the project
Experience Transformation
SURVEY THE LANDSCAPE
Starting with a deep strategy and research engagement, Oomph left no stone unturned in cataloging users and their journeys through a decade’s worth of websites and custom applications. We were able to conduct multiple interview sessions with engaged advocates of the organization. Throgh these interviews, the Earthwatch staff leanred how to conduct more and really listen to their constituents to internalize what they find wonderful about the experience as well as what they find daunting.
CREATE THE MAP
With a high-level service blueprint in place, Oomph then set out to transform the digital experiences most essential to the organization: the discovery and booking journey for individuals and the discovery, research, and inquiry journey for corporate sustainability programs.
The solution took shape as an overhaul and consolidation of Earthwatch’s public-facing websites.
Lay a New Journey Path
A fresh design approach that introduces new colors, beautiful illustrations, and captivating photography. Expedition discovery, research, and booking was transformed into a modern e-commerce shopping experience. Corporate social responsibility content architecture was overhauled with trust-building case studies and testimonials to drive an increase in inquiries.
The Oomph team far surpassed our (already high!) expectations. As a nonprofit, we had a tight budget and knew it would be a massive undertaking to overhaul our 7-year-old site while simultaneously launching an organizational rebrand. Oomph helped to guide us through the entire process, providing the right level of objective, data-driven expertise to ensure we were implementing user experience and design best practices. They listened closely to our needs and helped to make the website highly visual and engaging while streamlining the user journey. Thanks to their meticulous project management and time tracking, we successfully launched the site on time and exactly on budget.Alix Morris: MHS, MS, Director of Communications, Earthwatch
Why Drupal was chosen
The previous CMS was pieced together from separate and disparate services — the expeditions in one, the expedition guides as PDFs (which needed to be more consistently formatted and digitized), the blog articles in two different systems… It was a bit of an admin nightmare.
Drupal's flexible content modelling allowed our teams to redefine and prioritize fields for content to make the authoring experience more efficient. Flexible tools like Layout Builder gave authors more design control without the design system that we created. And when a third party system was still required — like the expedition booking engine — Drupal could easily support the integration.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
- Layout Builder - provides them with ability to dynamically layout various different looks and feels to each page on their site with ease. Allowed them to create uniform templated expedition pages, regular pages, and rich blog stories simply and quickly. A staple in this site.
- Layout Builder Restrictions - helped the client not get overwhelmed by the amount of choices in Layout Builder. Sped up content entry on the front end of the site launch.
- Media Library - As this is a very media intensive site, they needed a way to easily manage media. From within LB they can add, edit, and change any media they wish including an integration with a 3rd-party video service, Wistia.
- Custom Theme - The custom theme implemented in this site sets it apart more than any module used. The brush stroke sections, big hero images, and well-executed design components all make this an impressive and trustworthy site.
- Mailchimp — EarthWatch uses Mailchimp to send out newsletters and it was an important piece of the pre launch checklist. They have over a few thousand people signed up and they wanted to continue to be able to get those. The Mailchimp forms appear on every Expedition page and those are a staple in the site.
