Aurora Forecast
Overview
This was a custom feature built for the Pêmiska Tourism website and presented an interesting challenge to create. Pêmiska is located in northern Saskatchewan which means they can get high Aurora activity. The original ask from the client was to find an Aurora Forecast plugin that could be added to WordPress. Unfortunately many of the existing Aurora focused tools were limited or not able to integrate well with Wordpress. The goal then shifted to design forecast dashboard using existing and open Aurora API's. The design underwent a few iterations before the final layout was finalized. The widget uses two API's for data, the NOAA (Space Weather Prediction Center), which has current Aurora data and Weather API, which provides weather data specifically for cloud visibility.
My role was first to research Aurora's, how they work, existing forecasting solutions and data that provide the forecast. Once this research was done I then worked with the client to design and develop the interface. The dashboard widget on the Pemiska site is a Gutenberg block, allowing it to placed on multiple pages and moved around based on need. The project link below goes to a final prototype that was then translated into the final WordPress block.
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