Developing An Interactive System

Trout Unlimited, (seen here at tu.org) is a conservation group for conservation and outreach for fishing. They have local chapters in national regions throughout the country. Those chapters advocate for good fishing habits and conservation techniques. They also do regional education for anglers in the area to help encourage the aforementioned better fishing habits. Also to conduct volunteer efforts such as cleanup, fund grants, and restoration efforts (Seen here at https://www.tu.org/conservation/projects/).

In 2014, Trout Unlimited’s Project Finder (Linked here, at https://www.tu.org/conservation/projects/project-finder/), was originally developed as a system to find the group’s projects, as demonstrated by the image below. Developers designed the system to open tabs to specific projects via a filtering system, and there would also be an interactive map as well to find projects and group efforts via location.

Xentity worked to create an interactive map to provide information to anglers and volunteers about their website, meant to showcase regional territories and national territories, along with local chapters to encourage participation in volunteer efforts in conservation. As mentioned before, the map would explore national and local chapters, while the project finder itself would be designed to be used by community members to identify active and upcoming projects. in conservation

Making Current and Past Projects Accessible Online

At the time, Trout Unlimited lacked an easy way to represent dynamically changing content on their website. They also were unable to represent it geospatially. Furthermore, they wanted to provide an interactive filter for community members to visually identify areas of interest. 

Trout Unlimited did the discovery and define phases of this project, by identifying just what they desired in their “project finder”. This was a CARTO based project. CARTO is a Software as a Service cloud computing platform that provides GIS, web mapping, and spatial data science tools. As such, Xentity came in to aid in the design and development phases by reviewing available data. Also, by testing data compatibility with the CARTO platform. This ensured Trout Unlimited’s data and systems could be properly migrated to the new system. Lastly, Xentity developed the interactive map solution that met their objectives in designing Trout Unlimited’s “Project Finder.”

A Utilizable Interactive System

The “Project Finder” provides education to community members on territories and regional boundaries. Also, by providing a visual context to tens of local chapters and projects, they made the overall process easier and faster for community members. Before changing new interactive system, Trout Unlimited was able to use Project Finder to visually cite and reference their projects in talks and presentations. Also, they were able to provide a permalink that could present the map in any particular state.

At Xentity, we love data. We also love showing data in an interactive manner. One that provides information in a newer, faster, and more efficient way to users. We can provide design and development similar to this project, to other organizations with similar needs.