Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium
Building a digital ecosystem for a complex institution with a critical mission.
Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium began with one person’s passion for marine conservation. In 1955, “Shark Lady” Dr. Eugenie Clark founded a one-room marine lab. That endeavor grew over time to what Mote is now — an organization with global impact on marine life and habitats. Today, Mote is home to the best and brightest scientists, educators, and stewards committed to thriving marine ecosystems.
So much more than an aquarium, Mote welcomes over 350,000 visitors a year while developing science-based solutions to urgent problems. The renowned team at Mote saves marine wildlife, restores critical ecosystems, helps coastal communities preserve their quality of life, and more.
In 2014, Big Sea began working with Mote to grow their digital presence. Our story entered another chapter in 2020 when we began the discovery work needed to not only re-platform Mote’s website but bring the functionality up to speed with Mote’s research and educational needs. Over the span of almost four years, we collaborated with Mote’s teams to develop the tools they needed to continue their incredible work and expand their institution.
The Objectives
Build a scalable digital home for a premier research institution
- Strategize, reorganize, and migrate hundreds of pages of content, balancing the needs of researchers, visitors, students, educators, families, and donors.
- Design a new website showcasing Mote’s incredible research and facilities, while ensuring that information remained easy to find for all core audiences.
- Develop on WordPress using a complex, modular design system, making the site a responsive, multifunctional, SEO-friendly tool useful for multiple stakeholders.
- Integrate the Terentia DAM assets into a seamless front-end user experience, enabling easy content management across hundreds of team members.
The Problem
Building a website that works for everyone
Balancing user and end-user needs
Brilliant people keep Mote running smoothly. Every individual does important work. It was our job to get those folks around the table to express their individual needs. From there we worked to create balance and purpose, ensuring that every visual component and back-end feature was built with intentionality — honoring the needs of disparate audiences.
Integrating multiple platforms
Mote’s website is as much a tool as an information hub. When Mote selected Terentia as their digital asset management platform, our development team worked directly with theirs to ensure seamless integration. We also implemented a new ticketing system, helping Mote move onto a platform that better met their needs.
The Strategy
Listen, learn, and recommend
The scope and scale of this project required more than a year of R&D before project planning. Before so much as a single sketch took place, we hosted multiple workshops with Mote’s web team as well as their broader team of stakeholders. We engaged with donors, members, parents, and even volunteers. At the same time, our team analyzed website performance, examined website UX, and audited content.
In collaboration, we mapped user journeys and clearly defined the needs of the organization and its various users and use cases. This intensive discovery phase allowed us to make informed sitemap and navigation recommendations and build out the remainder of the project with confidence in our agreed-upon approach.
The Strategy
Marrying form and function
Flexible, human-centered design
Many cultural and scientific organizations struggle with long-term content governance online. We designed templates that allow site admins to build and organize new features while adhering to a system of content governance. This provided a scalable, sustainable solution for further content generation down the road.
Engaging visuals
Mote’s new website spotlights the beauty of marine life and aquatic ecosystems, exciting visitors and encouraging engagement with Mote’s many initiatives. Dynamic design and compelling visuals make the site a fun place for students and enthusiasts as well as a resource for scholars.
Big Sea helped our complex institution create a website that is clean and easy to navigate without diminishing the richness of our mission and identity. That’s an incredible balancing act!
Hayley RutgerContent Development Manager, MOTE
The Results
A robust ecosystem
With their new website in place, Mote has a robust digital ecosystem that promotes research and education, attracts new visitors, and encourages donors and members to support its mission.
As Mote plans to launch Mote SEA during their 70th-anniversary celebration, they can rely on a flexible website that will grow as their footprint expands in both their local community and the global community of people who care about our essential marine ecosystems.
