Client: UNEP/GRID-Arendal (for the United Nations Environment Programme)
Services Provided: Site planning, visual design, application development
The Sustainable Alternatives Network (SANet), jointly funded by the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank's Global Environment Facility, is an ambitious project aimed at leveraging investment in sustainable technologies in developing countries.
I designed the directories' browsing model around the concept of faceted classification. Faceted classification differs from hierarchical models of classification, which assign more importance to some facets than to others, by enabling users to filter content by the facets that are most important to them. This more egalitarian form of classification has become widely used through "tagging" features on social networking sites.
For example, let's say that someone wanted to find all the energy regulation experts in India. A traditional hierarchical classification might locate that category in one area of a hugely complex, preconceived tree of categories. If the user drills down into the classification system and takes a different path than the one assumed by the hierarchy, she will not find the content. Browsing the SANet directories, that can not happen. All content with attributes of India, energy, and regulation, will be found, regardless of whether the user begins browsing by region, sector, or area of expertise.
Check out the site at http://www.sustainablealternatives.net.