Terraware Visual Updates - Michael Ernst Design

Summary

Mission

As Terraware matured, the platform needed a comprehensive visual refresh to improve information hierarchy, enhance data visualization, and create a more cohesive user experience — across dashboards, maps, onboarding, and consumer-facing features.

My contributions

I led visual design across multiple product areas: the Plants Dashboard redesign, home screen transformation, new user onboarding flow, the Accelerator Console MVP, and a consumer-facing tree subscription service with landing page and user dashboard. Throughout, I managed and updated our design system components to keep the work consistent and scalable across the platform.

Visual Update 1

Plants Dashboard

Plants Dashboard Results

47%

Increase in Plants Dashboard engagement

71%

Survival Rate Settings adoption rate

Problem

The Plants Dashboard had outgrown itself — inaccessible colors, dense blocks of explanatory text, and a mortality rate indicator that framed every project around loss. Field teams and scientists needed a dashboard that helped them make decisions, not one that required decoding.

Objective

Redesign the Plants Dashboard to surface survival rate as the primary health metric, improve data visualization with trend charts and semantic color coding, and overhaul the site map and mobile experience for field usability.

Old dashboard vs updated dashboard comparison

Before and after data visualization comparison with annotated improvements

Improving the Visualization

Alongside the metric change, the underlying charts needed rethinking. Trend lines now show survival rate over time rather than point-in-time mortality snapshots. Semantic color indicators make health status scannable at a glance — green for thriving strata, red for at-risk ones. Density targets give science teams a scientific benchmark to measure actual counts against, making it easier to spot underperforming plots early.

Annotated dashboard redesign showing key design decisions

Dashboard Layout Details

The updated dashboard addressed a broader set of usability issues discovered during research. A cleaner layout with improved type hierarchy makes data faster to scan. The color scheme was updated for accessibility, card layouts were made flexible and consistent, and key values were given contextual tooltips — reducing cognitive load for teams reviewing data after long days in the field.

The Redesigned Dashboard

The final Plants Dashboard brings together project-level area totals, planted species breakdowns, trend lines, planting density, survival rates by strata and species, and an embedded site map — all in a single scrollable view that gives science teams and project managers a comprehensive picture of site health after every observation cycle.

Old Strata Level Data map with mortality rate color bands

Updated site map with survival rate strata, photo drawer, and interactive legend

Planting Site Map Updates

The original Strata Level Data map color-coded strata by mortality rate bands — a scheme that directed attention toward failure rather than health. The updated map uses multi-variate overlays for survival rates, replaces the old popover tooltip with a full drawer showing photos, observation events, and activity context, and adds larger controls and an interactive legend. Teams can now investigate any strata without losing their place on the map.

Mobile Plants Dashboard with annotated improvements to tap targets, cards, and legend

Mobile Experience

Observations are entered in the field through the Terraware mobile app. The mobile Plants Dashboard was updated alongside the web redesign — larger tap targets, stacked card layouts for readability on smaller screens, and a modified map legend make data review and entry easier during active fieldwork when conditions are far from ideal.

Visual Update 2

Home Dashboard

Home Dashboard Results

63%

Increase in user engagement

+7s

Average time spent on Home

Problem

Create a dashboard of a forestry project including planting site map, overview metrics, and species, seeds, and seedlings tracking.

Objective

Increase user engagement on the Home screen and create more intuitive entry points to sections of Terraware.

Home Screen Transformation

The original home screen was simply a list of redundant links. I transformed it into a content-rich interface that surfaces critical project information — a map, planting site selector, key metrics, and a mobile app banner — giving users meaningful context from the moment they log in.

Onboarding Experience

I created an initial onboarding flow to help new users set up their seed banks, nurseries, and species lists. The empty state serves a functional setup purpose while guiding users through essential configuration steps.

Visual Update 3

Accelerator Console

Accelerator Console Results

212

Projects in Accelerator pipeline

Productivity for Accelerator Team

Problem

Migrate our internal Accelerator Team's workflow into Terraware, named Accelerator Console with views into all project profiles in our pipeline.

Objective

Create a unified, intuitive workspace for the Accelerator Team to manage and track project progress.

Project Data Hub

When I joined Terraformation in 2024, all internal Accelerator projects were managed in the Project Data Hub. My job was to design the Accelerator Console MVP to move all projects into our core Terraware product.

Accelerator Console MVP

Project Profile Update

We continued to iterate on the project profile and gave it an updated visual presence with photos, maps of the planting site, and highlighted key metrics. This was also our first step in mirroring the profile page on our newly designed Founders Hub.

Visual Update 4

Tree Subscription Landing Page

Tree Subscription Results

57,000

Trees planted

90+

Subscribers

Problem

Create a consumer-friendly way for people to purchase a monthly subscription to plant trees.

Objective

Create a quick and easy way for people to make payments for planting trees.

Tree Subscription Service

As part of Terraformation's consumer-facing initiatives, I designed a landing page for recurring tree sponsorships and a dashboard where users can view photos of their sponsored trees and manage their accounts.