Ripple

Work / 1000 Springs

Rebuilding the 1000 Springs website

The 1000 Springs Project collected physical, chemical and microbial data from hundreds of New Zealand’s geothermal springs. I rebuilt the public website and developed an interactive explorer to make the data easier to browse and understand.

Open the live site Go straight to the explorer
What I did
Website design, front end and data explorer
Built for
Visitors, students, teachers, researchers and microbiologists
Data from
The 1000 Springs Project (GNS Science and the University of Waikato)
The 1000 Springs home page features a steaming geothermal pool behind the heading "A field guide to New Zealand's geothermal springs", with a safety banner across the top.
792spring records
12geothermal systems
35,261chemistry records
192,977taxonomy records

Totals as shown on the live site.

Where it started

The original site had done an important job: making a scientific dataset publicly available and warning visitors about the hazards of geothermal areas.

The problem was that the website itself had aged. It was built for desktop screens about a decade ago, with navigation based on icons, a long introduction over a dark photo and a layout that became difficult to use on a phone.

I wanted to keep the useful information and the original data, but make the website much easier to navigate.

The original 1000 Springs home page, with a dark photo, a block of welcome text and icon-based navigation.
The rebuilt home page, with a clear heading, a short introduction and two buttons over a spring photo.
Drag the handle, or use the arrow keys, to compare the old and new home pages.

What I changed

I kept the underlying records intact and rebuilt the way people access them.

The data is easy to access

Every spring and its associated records can be explored without creating an account, in keeping with the project’s open licence.

Safety information stays visible

A banner at the top of every page links to a more detailed safety guide. Visitors don’t have to find the warning on the home page and remember it for the rest of their visit.

Different audiences can find their way around

The site explains the information in plain language, whether someone is planning a visit, studying geothermal systems or working with the data as a researcher.

A layout that works on phones

The new site has a responsive layout, readable text, better contrast and a more direct way to get to the information. This matters for people looking things up while they’re out exploring geothermal areas.

Designed for smaller screens

The old site was difficult to use on a phone. I rebuilt the layout so the navigation, text and key information work on smaller screens rather than simply shrinking the desktop version.

The original site displayed on a phone, with a large logo and a long paragraph over a photo.
Before
The rebuilt site on a phone, with a safety banner, a short heading and two large buttons.
After

Exploring the data

The main feature is an interactive explorer that lets people search, filter and compare the full dataset.

Springs clustered across a satellite map of the central North Island, with search, system and temperature filters above.
Find springs on a mapView the springs on street, terrain or satellite maps. Search by name or place, filter by geothermal system, feature type, temperature and pH, and colour markers by temperature.
A scatter plot of pH against temperature for all 792 springs, alongside clickable bar charts showing temperature and pH ranges.
Explore the dataset through chartsCompare pH and temperature across the springs, along with charts covering temperature, pH, geothermal system, feature type and chemistry. Clicking a chart filters the other views to help narrow down the results.
The record for Alum Cliffs Feature 1 at Waiotapu, with a field photo, site description, temperature and pH, a water chemistry chart and a microbial diversity chart.
Open an individual spring recordEach spring has its own page with field notes, physical measurements, water chemistry and microbial diversity, linked back to the original record.

About the data

The dataset belongs to the 1000 Springs Project, run by GNS Science and the University of Waikato, and is used under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

I designed and built the website and explorer. The underlying dataset and scientific findings belong to the project, and the records link back to their original sources.