University of Limerick: Mission Lab

Mission Lab is a University of Limerick program that uses a mission based approach to research and develop solutions to complex, real world problems. It starts with 21 initiatives (missions) that utilises the university's inter-disciplinary knowledge and skills for collaboration and creativity to drive positive change and create a sustainable, equitable, and just world for all.

We built the site as an interface for information about the overall project, and each of the individual missions.

Sanity was instrumental for creating the unique data models to define what a mission is, and to capture all that data consistently.

The most unique feature on this site is the map. We made a design decision in early in project not to pursue a fully fledged 3D environment for the map. Instead we would create a faux 3D interactive map, by utilising high quality rendered images and videos of a 3D map, and implementing neat ‘panning’ CSS transforms to create the illusion of an interactive environment with the mouse at desktop, and touch at mobile.

This worked particularly well by utilising Sanity's Hotspot array plugin, which allows you to conveniently place relatively positioned points of content placed on an image (or for us, a still of our map) - big thanks to Simeon Griggs and Till Schweneker for working on this, it was very useful for our approach!

The Mission Lab site was created in collaboration between the University of Limerick and Studio Saol, with the help of Bien Studio and Allan Pooley (Dev)