Amphibian Ark is a conservation programme aiming at the preservation of amphibians around the globe. I led the end-to-end design process, including the re-organisation of the migrated content and merging documentation provided on the existing website. This work has been developed as part of the Liquid Light agency.
Wireframes, UI & UX Design, QA Testing, Design Library, Illustration
Figma, CickUp, Procreate
June 2024-April 2025
Amphibians have been around since dinosaurs, but their habitats and existence are in danger. Amphibian Ark are a not-for-profit organisation addressing this crisis by building a global conservation community, holding endangered species in captivity until it is safe to release them.
Due to their progressive growth in the community, and considering the workshops and resources available on the site, Amphibian Ark's website was ready for an improved platform that can keep up with the work they produce.
The design brief was very loose, allowing for plenty of freedom and exploration. I explored 3 different directions with the client: something minimal and earthy (1), one with a geometric and with campaign-feel (2), and the last one being a playful and illustrative one (3). In the end, we settled for a mix of the first and last one, keeping the overall feel of the first option but adding some organic shapes from the latter.
Three initial homepage wireframe routes were explored: The Urgency (1), The Story-telling (2) and The Educator. Each of those provided a different approach to the organisation positioning and, ultimately, it was up to us to explore with the client how they'd like to be perceived. Would they want to showcase the emergency of the crisis the amphibians are facing and their extinction? Would they rather inform the public on what they do and who they are as an organisation? Or is promoting workshops and resources more in their interest? All of those questions and more were discussed, learning that they are an established organisation which would like to clarify their conservation process to the users draw in donations.
With a constrained budget, the wireframe stage was limited to the homepage only. The sitemap process, as well as constant communication with the client, allowed us to build onto the page designs as we went along in the high-fidelity stage.
Essential documentation accessed by the conservation community was hosted on their old website. Things like filtering and appropriate categorisation were considered in order to achieve the best user experience possible and make it effortless for users to find the files they need. In the past, those resources went uncategorised on one page, making it an issue to find what you're looking for as a user. We opted for maximum optimisation by creating a complex filtering system, from language and continent to amphibian genus and family. To avoid null results, the filter dropdowns show the user the amount of search results they'd get.
With a restricted budget and a tight deadline, I managed as a sole designer to deliver to Amphibian Ark a website design not only visually improved, but also functionally sound and appealing to donors. As a reflection, with more time and a bigger budget it would've been useful to A/B test the husbandry library and create an improved platform for their resources (eg their training resources featuring a video library). Considering all the constraints, the functionality is much improved, and the Liquid Light agency is still in touch with Amphibian Ark, which allows for improvements and revisions for a later date.
