Production Private Release 1: The first release was a private version of Satellite Stories - Ol Pejeta to present to the team at Ol Pejeta and get their feedback on the animal movement to ensure we have an accurate representation.

Production Private Release 2: The second release was another private release, but designed to test the overall experience with members of our target audience. This release presented a fully developed visual identity and user interface, and include one fully narrated story to test. These elements would allow us to test with our audience if they understood what Satellite Stories is and what it can do, the usability of the interface, the enjoyment and engagement with the content, the desire to explore more and the preferences for our shortlisted Voiceover Auditions.

Final release Final data refinement and creation of the high-resolution story-specific movement, all the story scripts, recording of voice over, optimising loading and performance, improving design of the user interface and implementing the changes, finishing the story editor and final design touches.

Key project principles

We’d like to share some of the key principles that underpin the project for anyone who, like us, is looking to engage broader audiences through data.

1. Remove all barriers to access

If we want as many people as possible to dive into interactive conservation stories, we don’t want anything standing in the way. We built Satellite Stories in such a way that there are as few barriers as possible to get into the content. No fancy apps to download, no special software to install. You can access the product through any browser, see the movements and listen to the stories of elephants, rhinos or hippos.

2. Give the user control of the story

While most data visualisations are relatively static in nature or a passive experience for the user, Satellite Stories aims to invite the audience to self-explore, learn a little more about wildlife movements and behaviour patterns, and draw some of their own conclusions through the experience. The users literally have their fingers on the controls to navigate through Ol Pejeta conservancy. They can choose what they want to see and when they want see it.

3. Speak to the people behind the data

We didn’t just copy-paste the data from our conservation partner into the design. Our data scientist Raff Mares travelled to Ol Pejeta and spent time with the team of conservationists and rangers who know the area and the animals intimately. Of course this is done to ensure our visualisations are as accurate as possible, but also to aid the editing process. There are simply too many data points to choose from, and the Ol Pejeta team knows the stories behind the zeros and ones. Raff visited key sites within the conservancy (for instance the wildlife corridors) to hear the stories, select the most meaningful ones and obtain animal and landscape data.