Reef Watch Maldives

Overview

Reef Watch is a fictional Maldives non-profit concept that turns snorkelling experiences into a funding and awareness engine for coral bleaching research, connecting travellers directly to reef conservation.

Ocean conservation causes often struggle to convert visitor curiosity into sustained funding. The challenge was designing an experience-led platform that makes donating feel like participating, not just giving.

The Problem

Tourists visiting the Maldives frequently snorkel over bleaching reefs without understanding what they’re seeing or how to help, while local research teams lack a steady, visitor-driven funding stream.

Research

I researched existing coral conservation NGOs, Maldives tourism patterns, and citizen-science diving programmes to understand how experience-based fundraising already works and where it falls short.

Research synthesis visual.

Key Insights

Visitors were far more likely to donate after directly seeing bleached versus healthy coral, and wanted a tangible way to track the impact of their contribution beyond a generic donation receipt.

Design Challenge

How might we turn a single snorkelling excursion into an ongoing connection between a traveller and the reef they experienced?

Ideation

I explored concepts from a gamified ‘adopt-a-reef’ model to a simple donation page, landing on a hybrid: guided experiences paired with a personal ‘reef passport’ that tracks the sites a traveller has helped fund.

Early concept exploration.

Information Architecture

The site is structured around three pillars — Experiences, Research, and Your Reef Passport — with a booking flow for snorkelling trips that automatically links a portion of the fee to a specific research site.

User Flows

A visitor browses experiences, books a guided snorkel session, receives a reef passport entry afterward, and can return to the site to see ongoing research updates from the site they funded.

Wireframes

Early wireframes tested whether donation and booking should be separate or merged. Merging them into one booking flow tested clearer, reducing decision fatigue for visitors.

UI Design

The UI uses a calm aquatic palette, full-bleed underwater photography, and clear before/after reef imagery to communicate impact without resorting to alarmist messaging.

Final interface detail.

Prototype

The prototype shows browsing a snorkelling experience, completing a booking, and later viewing a reef passport update showing coral recovery progress at the funded site.

Testing

As a concept project this hasn’t been tested with real travellers or researchers. Validating the reef passport concept with both audiences would be the natural next step.

Iteration

The donation mechanism moved from a separate ‘donate’ button to being built into the booking price after feedback that separate asks felt like an added transaction rather than part of the experience.

Final Solution

The final concept pairs bookable snorkelling experiences with a personal reef passport, turning each visitor into a long-term supporter of a specific coral research site rather than a one-time donor.

Final concept screens.

Outcome

This is a concept project for a fictional organisation and has not been deployed. It is intended to demonstrate how experience design can support conservation funding models.

Reflection

Designing for a cause taught me to balance urgency with hope — showing damage without making visitors feel helpless. I’d explore partnering the passport with real research data visualisation next.