Fact-ivism
- Next.js
- DatoCMS
Teaming up with MakerChange, I developed an interactive platform for Fact-ivism, an initiative by the World’s Largest Lesson inviting students worldwide to choose a global issue, visualise its impact using real data, and share it in a live Fact-ivist gallery. Built with Next.js and DatoCMS, the platform supports thousands of creative submissions and a multilingual user experience.
Technical and design challenges
The platform needed to:
- Inspire students to participate and interact with data via a clean, playful interface
- Handle thousands of user submissions with efficient review and publishing tools
- Support multiple languages and load content dynamically
We also had a tight timeline of a month to deliver a scalable, accessible, and high-performance solution.
Fact-ivist gallery
Each card, a creative endeavour submitted by a student, illustrates a data point for a chosen Global Goal. The ‘card flip’ animation on hover reveals the data point and allows user to open a popup window, offering a close-up view of the art and further description.
Design & build approach
In the web design stage, I adapted MakerChange’s branding for digital use – prioritising clarity, accessibility and a clean interface.
On the development side, the client needed guidance in selecting a CMS that could handle thousands of student submissions, support multi-language content, and enable smooth editorial workflows for non-technical users.
After evaluating several headless CMS options, I recommended DatoCMS for its flexibility, localization features, and powerful editorial workflows. Paired with Next.js 13, this stack allowed for efficient dynamic routing, internationalisation, and fast content filtering within a performant frontend architecture.
To accelerate the build process, I used Webflow DevLink to visually prototype key UI components and export clean, production-ready React code – enabling us to launch a multilingual platform under the ambitious timeline.
Card submission page and a downloadable thank you certificate which shows up after submission
Submission Flow
One of the key features was the student artwork submission flow:
- Students upload their illustrated “data card” via a form
- The image is compressed server-side
- A draft entry is automatically created in DatoCMS
- Editors can then review, approve, and publish cards directly into the live gallery
This system helped us streamline content moderation and make the process accessible for non-technical teams.
Webflow DevLink was used to speed up the development by visually creating components in Webflow and exporting them into code.
Outcome
We delivered a fully responsive, production-grade platform in a month. It now supports thousands of student submissions, serves a global audience in multiple languages, and gives teachers tools to foster data-driven activism in the classroom.
The website is available in English, Arabic, French and Spanish.