In 30 seconds
- Challenge
- Astronomy research and telescope data are scattered and paywalled, and amateur astronomers have no real way in.
- My part
- The research, service design, flows, prototypes and design system, with UDesign at the University of Toronto.
- Result
- Development started but wasn’t finished, and CITA never used it. The design is what remains.
The problem
Much of astronomy is locked behind academic walls. Research is paywalled or scattered, and finding data from a specific telescope means piecing it together from many sources. Amateur astronomers and independent researchers have no real way in.
We worked with UDesign at the University of Toronto for the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics.
What I did
We designed a platform that works like a library and a social network at once: people create profiles, publish their work, search telescope data from around the world and find others to collaborate with.
I worked across research, personas, low and high fidelity prototypes and the design system components the developers built from.
What happened
The developers started building it, but the project ended before it was finished and CITA never used it. What remains is the design: the research, the flows, the prototypes and the design system.