SeaSource

UI/UX design
Problem statement
Since civilization, marine animals are forced to adapt their rapidly changing habitat quickly and face many anthropology threats. To start, coral reefs only make up 1% of the ocean footprint yet contribute to more than 25% of all lifes in the ocean. The rising in average sea temperature resulted in devastating coral bleaching events, and some of them will never recover. In addition, various forms of pollution also threatens the life below water, including sound pollution(resulted in the decrease in herring population, which then impacted salmon who feed on herrings andOrcas than feeds off salmons), to plastic pollution(the great pacific garbage patch), chemical pollution (heavy metal, PCBS, radioactive, etc). Furthermore, overfishing and illegal fishing remains a threat to the healthy equilibrium of marine ecosystems. Notably the species that are considered delicacies such as shark fins, abalone, and numerous types of tunas are being overfished the hardest, often from illegal fishing practices due to their high market values.
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Existing solution
The current solutions include sustainable fishing and reduced ocean traffic. However, with time fishing and tourism have increased exponentially that has been causing danger to creatures below water. The ongoing pandemic has shown the world that with almost 0 sea activity oceans across the world have shown signs of recuperation. Us as citizens of the world need to find abetter solution other than what the world has been trying to implement for the longest of times. A lot of countries are coming together to form agreements on illegal fishing but these agreements don’t really help a lot in reality as there are instances when countries knowingly ignore such practices in their surrounding areas. Other than fishing, another thing that has to be considered while coming up for a better non-existent solution to save lives below water, we must find loopholes in these agreements that allow organizations to dump waste/plastic on shores or in the ocean. Hence, it is quite evident that these solutions don’t really help in saving lives below water and we must come up with better solutions to eradicate this problem.
User Persona
For the landing page, the design consists of a navigation bar at the top containing different features of the website. On the left, there is the logo of SeaSource.We chose to follow the design principle of symmetry by adding four core action items on the navigation bar: Search, Map, About, and Action. This navigation tool is designed with the colors of black and white, which follows the color scheme of our recognizable logo. Additionally, we purposely designed the page to make the search bar/ question easy to notice on the screen. This would allow users to first notice the search bar, then the question.

From there, users can select from one of the two search options: either by location and by name. We renamed the search tab and search by buttons in order to make the search process as clear and easy as possible. Users have the option to enter their location in the “By location” search page to find seafood local to the area or search for the name of the seafood in the “By name” search page when they want to learn more about a particular fish.

We also added a voice search feature for accessibility which can be used with smartphones and home speakers. This feature is designed for users that are unable to use a keyboard in order to access our technology. In addition, it also helps in the instances when users can’t spell the name of the fish
Design decisions
Limitation
As stated above, the SeaSource app has a limited number of targeted users and demographics. Our targeted users are located mainly in the coastal area in each country. People living in inland areas who do not consume seafood regularly might not find the SeaSource app useful. Through our interviews with friends, we found that only people who like eating seafood have shown interest in the SeaSource app. Others who consume seafood less frequently said that they might use the SeaSource app a couple of times but they will not be an active user. According to the Food and AgricultureOrganization of the United Nations, an estimated 59.5 million people were engaged in fisheries and aquaculture in 2018. (The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2020)Compared to the world’s population, our targeted group is still relatively small. The small percentage of people who rely mainly on seafood as a source of protein and people who harvest fish in the ocean to make a living has caused the SeaSource app to target only a small group of users.