/portfolio

Designing for Water Literacy

Arizona Water Innovation Initiative / 2025

UX Research

Environmental Data Visualization

Exhibition Design

Systems Thinking

Exhibition Design for Water Literacy

The Challenge of Invisible Systems

Groundwater is essential to Black Canyon City, yet it remains largely invisible and difficult for residents to understand. Complex concepts like aquifers, contamination, and water demand are often fragmented or overly technical, limiting community awareness and engagement.

Why this matters?: When essential systems remain invisible, users disengage. Clear, intuitive visual design reduces cognitive load, builds trust, and enables informed environmental decision-making.

What I Set Out To Learn

Rather than starting with visuals, I framed the work around three guiding questions:

How do residents currently understand where their water comes from and how it is managed?
Which representations (visual, spatial, conversational) most effectively support comprehension and trust?
What misconceptions or gaps prevent residents from engaging with water conservation practices?

Research & Evaluation

User research was conducted through moderated interviews and focus-group sessions with Black Canyon City residents to understand how community members perceive groundwater and local water systems. Participants engaged with groundwater and conservation concepts through multiple modalities, including illustrated explanations, immersive VR experiences, and a conversational water chatbot allowing us to evaluate comprehension across different learning styles.

Real-world Constraints

Five real-world constraints shaped every subsequent design decision: a traveling exhibit with variable room sizes and layouts, mixed audiences (K–12, adults, educators), limited time-on-task and group-based movement, accessibility challenges (height, reading ability, tech hesitation), and NDA constraints on select government-facing materials.

Concept Exploration

Sketches and spatial studies explored how scale, layering, and narrative flow could support learning across physical and digital touchpoints. Early concepts tested whether an exhibit could feel less like a museum wall and more like a walkable diagram, where visitors moved through the water system rather than reading about it.