The current World Water Watch website has a few basic pieces of information, but is lacking in a number of major areas. It feels very much like an underutilized resource: a second hand citizen in World Water Watch's worthy goal of bringing attention to the current state of the world's waterways. With a relatively simple redesign, it would be possible to bring this website into the spotlight as a resource for people looking to find out more about the organization.
Currently, there are two major areas on the site: a Mission Statement and a News section. This proposal will explain how these sections can each be expanded to be more informative, useful, and interesting to visitors to the site.
Recreating the World Water Watch website as a premier resource to the organization will take several steps, each allowing the website to increase in level of utility and user friendliness.
Stage 1 will create a user friendly site, containing the information currently held by the World Water Watch website, but in a more visually appealing style. The current look and feel of the WWW website is not appealing to the end user, in a number of ways, which this stage of the proejct would look to correct in a number of ways:
Upon completion of Phase 1, a complete website, containing the same information as the current WWW site, will be available to all users, regardless of platform, which will allow the site to be seen in a more positive light by potential customers of the organization.
Stage 2 will seek to recreate some of the content on the current website with more attention paid to needs set forth by visitors to the site. This includes additional descriptions of what the organization does, as well as bringing together information as to the effects WWW has had. Additionally, several areas will be added for administration by the members of the WWW: simple to use tools will be built that allow for administration of certain sections of the site. Two ideal candidates for this are the "News" and "Upcoming Events" areas, both of which will require more frequent updates than the rest of the site.
With this in mind, the following tasks will fulfill Stage 2 of the project:
This will allow the WWW website to move into a more dynamic and complete marketing tool, allowing the organization to spread its message to a wider audience as well as attracting new members.
The WWW has a number of data collection centers, as well as having a large dataset from previous studies. Currently, none of this information is available online. With the use of the WWW website as a marketing tool secure, the use of the website as an information resource will be a useful addition.
To assess the level of interest in various aspects of the WWW's data collection, the website will require that users first register with the website. This allows for more directed studies to take place in the future: with registered user information, it will be possible for the the WWW to look at the interest by users in specific studies and other similar information.
Development of this aspect of the site will again allow for administration via simple to use tools on the WWW's part. Various aspects may include live data from monitoring stations, whitepapers or studies provided in PDF form, or simply resources on monitoring water usage in your own area.
The current WWW website is inaccessible, difficult to use, and lacks much in the way of information for people looking to interact with the organization. Through some relatively minor changes, it would be possible to bring this more into line with the way that users may find more useful, as well as bringing it into the modern world of web standards, with the benefit of making the site more accessible to all users.