SankalpTaru Foundation
Keywords:
Social Platform, Tree Plantation, User Centered Design, Environmental Awareness
Role:
Advisor, User Experience
Duration:
March 2012 - June 2013
Project Description
SankalpTaru is a Tree Plantation and Rural Livelihood Support Program. It is a Social Network of Trees, where you plant trees online, tag wishes to them and stay connected with them through GPS and other social technologies.
My Contribution
I have been involved in designing an Online Portal for Tree Plantations, with features such as:
- Selection of Plantation Sites
- Tagging the Saplings
- ECOde Management
- Tree Profiles
- CSR-Microsites
- Watering Friend's Trees
- Carbon Footprint
- Retail Card for ECOde
- Wishy and Branding
to name a few. The portal has been designed to represent a virtual forest space, customised for each user who plants. I was also involved in User Experience Initiatives such as Conceptualization of Brand Mascot named 'Wishy', and maintaining an online presence. The tools used were Photoshop, HTML, CSS, jQuery for Drupal Integration.
Process Followed
SankalpTaru, being a live project, which has a good user base, there is a need to planout each and every activity well in advance and have deadlines for all the deliverables. So we followed an Agile methodology for designing the whole portal as well as other initiatives offline. Every design that is made went through initial stages of brainstorming and concept generation, followed by sketching, wireframing and low fidelity mockup development, which when got approved by all the team members went through a phase of High Fidelity Design and Development. Keeping sync with both online and offline plantation activities along with sales by generating an online presence was quite interesting and fun.
Tools and Technologies
- HTML/CSS
- JavaScript and jQuery
- Adobe Creative Suite
Team Work
SankalpTaru comprises of highly qualified individuals from diverse fields of Engineering, Management, Civil Service and Government sectors. It was very good to work in a team of such professionals, where I got to learn a lot from them, about the working of the industry and got an exposure to a lot of people.
What I have learnt
SankalpTaru portal provides an opportunity to plant a tree from any where in the world are.
- Initially it was a B2B Product, but eventually a B2C retail channel was also planned, wherein we had to run basic usability tests and revise the website and portal for retail users.
- Later we had also started selling ECOde Retail Cards for plantations. I was also responsible for the branding and maintaining an online presence through production of online viral content.
- I have learnt immensely while working with SankalpTaru, as I had to work closely with the Business Team to provide design solutions at each and every phase.
Portfolio > Industrial Experience > SankalpTaru Foundation