The Jharana page features many of Splash's talking points: migration trends, urban water issues, Splash's technological approach, and their goal of 100% coverage of public schools in Kathmandu by 2020.
The story and visuals look great on small screens, but users with larger screens get to enjoy more visuals that weren't essential to the story, but add to the scene nonetheless.
Splash was concerned that the original Jharana story page was too fluffy to live on in the new Splash website, whose new target audience gives support based on data more than emotion. In order to continue to be relevant to Splash's new audience, it needed to be invigorated with more substance.
Jharana 1.0 had attempted to add some substance by using the Jharana character to talk about Splash's programs and goals. However, it rang false since the young girl begins the narrative speaking in elementary English but ends it with a much more complex vocabulary.
For Jharana 2.0 to work on both the data-driven and emotional levels, Splash's values needed to be removed from Jharana's speech, allowing her story to be told in her voice—the voice of a young girl growing up in Kathmandu.
I divided the narrative into three parts: 1. Statistics and programatic goals tell the user what is happening at the macro level in Kathmandu's development obstacles. 2. Jharana's story of personal obstacles and triumphs that mirror the issues on the macro level. 3. Background characters and environmental scenes that speak for themselves. Some things just don't need to be said. For example, "Jharana's family moved to a slum community" wouldn't be tasteful.
Water Crisis! is an unfinished project. The short opens with an African girl who lives in a rural village and walks every day to fetch water from a dirty watering hole. She is the archetype of water poverty. The scene that follows introduces a new paradigm—a girl who lives on the margins of a massive, crowded city ( Kathmandu, Kolkata, etc), and walks to a contaminated water spout where she waits in line.