Client
Ruth D. Gates
Coral Restoration Innovation
Timeline
10 months
Role
Design Lead &
Strategic Architect
Collaboration
5 Cross-disciplinary
team members
Reef Guild: Designing a More Collaborative Future for Global Marine Science
Project Overview
Turning competition into a shared ecosystem
This project started with what sounded like a simple request:
“Can you design a better platform for data sharing?”
But very quickly, it became clear the real issue wasn’t data or technology. It was the fact that global marine science was operating inside a system that unintentionally rewarded competition and made collaboration costly.
So we reframed the challenge entirely.
Instead of another tool, we designed The Reef Guild—a self-sustaining, incentive-driven ecosystem where collaboration becomes the smarter, more rewarding choice.
My role
I was the Design Lead and Strategic Architect for a 10-month engagement, guiding a cross-disciplinary team of five and working closely with scientists, institution leaders, and funders. Much of my job was translation between scientific culture, design methods, and system-level change.
These projections were derived through a synthesis of grant-overlap analysis, institutional interviews, and financial modeling validated with two partner institutions.
Key quantifiable results
Metric
Before Reef Guild
Projected Impact (3 Years)
↓ 38–42% (≈ $4.5–5.1M saved)
Annual redundant research cost
$11.8M–$12.3M
$14–16M projected
$0
Collaborative funding unlocked
70–75% modeled
< 15%
Data-sharing rate across institutions
Arc Transition: Soft arc pattern at the blade cover that emphasized transition but lacked alignment clarity.
Soft Linear: Subtle tactility and visual softness but limited functional cues.
01. Setting the Stage: The Problem Was Never “Just Data”
At first glance, the challenge looked technical: fragmented data, inconsistent formats, inaccessible repositories.
But by speaking with researchers, shadowing lab work, and mapping institutional workflows, a different truth emerged:
Scientists weren’t avoiding collaboration. They were navigating a system that made it slow, risky, and unrewarding.
Data lived in silos not because people wanted it that way, but because the system incentivized it.
02. Challenging the Brief: A Critical Reframing Tool
The turning point came from a single sentence during an interview:
“I spend more time negotiating data access than actually analyzing it.”
That line captured a reality we saw again and again:
collaboration carried a hidden cost—lost time, unclear credit, and potential career disadvantage.
So we reframed the problem:
How might we create a system where sharing isn’t a sacrifice, but a strategic advantage—both professionally and institutionally?
This shift unlocked every design decision that followed.
03. Insights That Shifted Our Direction
Three insights fundamentally reshaped the solution:
1
Collaboration has a hidden tax
“There are a lot of working groups… but we’re not sharing what’s working with each other.” — Director, Vulcan
Scientists spent weeks negotiating permissions and authorship—an invisible drag slowing global progress.
2
Recognition outranks financial reward.
“You need a group who wakes up every morning thinking about driving the collective forward.” — Dr. Helen Fox, WWF
Priority access to aggregated datasets was consistently described as more valuable than money.
3
Trust comes from transparency, not technology.
“The system itself is biased toward minimizing data sharing… we need to fix that.” — Dr. Hollie Putnam
No system would succeed unless contribution, authorship, and credit were fully traceable.
These insights pushed us toward designing an ecosystem—one where incentives, transparency, and governance mattered as much as the interface.
04. Architecting the Backstage: Building a System That Can Actually Work
2. Interaction Research: Magnetic System for Reliability and Modularity
We structured research to validate solutions that enhance both user experience and hardware reliability:
Magnetic Assembly System
Result:
100% first-time success rate and a shift in emotional response from "clunky" to "premium, like using an Apple product."
Hardware Impact:
The magnetic connection enhances long-term reliability by reducing mechanical wear and provides a modular platform for future accessories (e.g., different capacity containers).
We also optimized the tactile and auditory feedback of the "click" to ensure a satisfying, ritualistic moment.
Hybrid Interface (Button + Gesture)
Result:
Final solution achieved a 95% first-time success rate, balancing certainty and fluidity.
Hardware Impact:
This hybrid approach was chosen to balance cost, reliability (water resistance), and UX. The physical button provides certainty for critical operations, while the gesture offers elegant secondary control, avoiding the high cost and fragility of a full touchscreen.
My role was to be the strategic bridge, ensuring that every design decision was an evidence-based response to user needs and manufacturable requirements.
Engineering & Manufacturing Focus:
Process Integration:
I ensured the Discover → Hypothesize → Prototype → Test → Refine research cycle was tightly integrated with the engineering and manufacturing timeline, providing actionable data within the design freeze window.
Translating Abstract Insights to Engineering Specs
I successfully translated abstract insights (e.g., "Ritual Experience") into concrete engineering specifications, such as defining the required magnetic connection force (in Newtons) to ensure both reliable connection and easy separation.
04. Final Reflection
This conceptual project challenged me to think beyond traditional research boundaries. The breakthrough wasn't the 87.5% accuracy metric—it was discovering that texture could serve as an unconscious guidance system, potentially eliminating instruction manuals entirely.
The diagonal pattern solution exemplifies how constraint-driven research (cost, manufacturing, user needs) can produce unexpectedly elegant solutions.
Most importantly: CMF isn't cosmetic. It's functional UX.
