NOAA’s Great Lakes Water Life is a website for users to explore all of the species in the Great Lakes. Using an extensive database, this website showcases taxonomic names and other information about each species including filtering features for all users.
With this project we hoped to improve data accessibility and user interaction through a seamless, responsive interface. Our team built a dynamic Next.js application backed by a custom MongoDB database so that users can browse, search, and filter through species data easily.
Team:
Ethan Snyder
Swetha Sriram
Zi Wan
Sue Yixin Wang
Jacob Weiskopf
Boyan Wu
Catherine Zhou
Time: 10 weeks
February 2025 - April 2025
UMSI Masters Capstone Project:
SI 699 User Centered Agile Development
Professors:
Stephanie Brenton
Janet Szczesny
Our client identified that the website design and functionality was outdated. Our team worked with our client to outline specific functionality goals as well as back end database goals for this project. This includes the creation of a database to store wildlife information, creation of an application that mirrors the current ability of the Great Lakes Water Life website designed to be more modern and intuitive to users.
Researchers:
Researchers use the website for research about specific species in the Great Lakes. They need easy and intuitive filters, and an ability to download filtered data about species.
Children/Explorers:
Explorers use the this website to discover new species and learn information about the Great Lakes. The explores need to be able to understand the information easily and browse through the species with ease.