About the Project
This project is to develop a web interface to complement the experience of visiting the Christina Reiman Butterfly Wing. The goal is to deliver information about individual species of butterflies, butterfly conservation efforts, interesting butterfly facts, and other butterfly-related information to the visitor in an intuitive and engaging manner.
This web app should be well-suited for working on any screen size ranging from tablet and desktop browsers to smart phone browsers. In addition to running on a visitor’s mobile device, the web app will be run on two touch screen kiosks at Reiman Gardens.
In addition to the visitor-side kiosk interface, our team is developing a system for the volunteers and staff at Reiman Gardens to manage information about the Wing, including updating information about species, recording shipments and releases, and managing the content displayed on the system.
When we started this project, Reiman Gardens had already incorporated touch screen kiosks that ran an interactive display, which can be located at RGButterflyApp.com. Due to time constraints, the features that this site provided lacked functionality, or were difficult to use.
Surveys conducted by our client demonstrated that a tool such as this interactive website would be extremely useful, but the current version left a lot to be desired in terms of functionality and interaction.
As we are nearing the end of the project, we're finding that the things remaining are matters of polishing what we currently have. Reiman Gardens has a link to our website, and we are expecting that they will use the new layout with the volunteers soon, and will record the feedback from volunteers and visitors.
Our team, as of now, has developed most of the front-end interface for both visitors and staff, and the back-end/database interaction has been set up to offer a functional user experience, for both visitors to the Wing and for the volunteers and staff that are tracking shipments and releases.
We have come a long way in the past year, and are happy with the product we've developed. Several members of our team have expressed an interest in continued development of this project after the semester ends, as well.