For UNSW, this was a strategic project with clear business objectives to attract, retain and develop leading research staff and students, and to encourage active collaboration with the best on their fields globally. There were numerous sites profiling research projects across the university and the Research Gateway was to consolidate all these sites, reduce admin related enquiries and eliminate information duplication through design and development of a single gateway or portal. We developed a design-led strategy and undertook research with partners (Zumio & Red Rollers) to understand user groups and their needs. This together with co-design activities with stakeholders led to the creation of the Research Gateway concept.

Primary amongst a  number of project objectives was tto connect people and projects across the University, creating opportunities for collaboration that would be unlikely to occur otherwise. The result of this highly collaborative project is a singularly engaging and vibrant ‘gateway’ that caters to a range of research questions and inquiries from many different kinds of users. Most importantly it is a credible, usable and authoritative source of information. Digital Eskimo worked closely to manage the build and integration of the new portal across the three year project.

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Digital Eskimo was tasked to help communicate this new focus with an open brief to make it “engaging and cool”.  During our first immersion workshop together it became clear the NRMA had some great data on the impacts of driving – in particular the benefits of changing your driving habits and keeping your car serviced. We decided that this would be the perfect place to begin the process of communicating the benefits of greener driving in a whole new way.

The thing that jumped out for us was the fact that while each individual action was small the cumulative effect of changing your habits across nine relatively painless and sensible behaviours was a rather large yearly saving – in both money and released carbon. So we designed the infographic and messaging to focus more heavily on the financial savings while reinforcing the environmental benefits. After all, who can argue with $2,546 extra in your pocket at the end of the year!?

The Green Your Ride infographic is now starring in a range of NRMA online, print and in-house poster campaigns.

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The graphic was commissioned in the lead up to the NewsStand campaign which called for an inquiry into Australia’s media. NewsStand also deployed our campaign platform Do Gooder in a successsful 11th hour bid to encourage Parliament to vote in favour of the inquiry, something that only a year ago would have been considered only slightly more likely than a pig flying backwards from Burke reading the Age (as everyone knows it would read the Daily Telegraph as the Age isn’t available in rural Australia!)

The inquiry was widely considered an important piece of work and its recommendations well received (except by the media organisations it reviewed who were predictably dismissive – ironically proving why we need change!) by independent experts, political; parties such as The Greens and credible progressive media outlets like New Matilda , Crikey and so on. One of the most important recommendations was to replace the ineffective industry operated Press Council with a statutory review body, the Australian Media Council; which if  well implemented will have significant positive outcomes for our media diet.

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At Digital Eskimo, we’re passionate about investing time and energy into projects that make a positive difference in the world. For the past ten years we’ve helped clients design and build online campaign websites to deliver positive social and ecological outcomes on low budgets and time frames.

The reality is most grass root campaigns don’t have the resources to invest in custom-built campaign websites and tools. Often organisations that can ‘afford’ to invest in the online component of the project do so at the expense of campaign strategy, branding, messaging, visual creative and ongoing campaign management.

What if we could provide anyone with the online tools at a fraction of the cost of a custom-built website? A few years ago the thought stuck us that we could take what we’ve learnt designing, building and managing campaigns and deliver it as a service.  We’d seen with our own campaigns how powerful online campaigning can be when done right and so we decided to get those tools into the hands of many more people.

Do Gooder allows anyone with a cause to run their own campaign, whether it be to petition councillors about local issues, lobby company CEOs or to mobilise a country and create a widespread political movement. Already Do Gooder is being used to put pressure on governments to stick to their word and allowing people to support action on climate change.

We can’t wait to see what do-gooders around the world will use it for next!

Try Do Gooder for FREE now

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The game, which runs across eight iPads, aims to teach children and adults about the challenges associated with managing Sydney’s water supply system and is the first deployment of iPads as museum gallery interfaces in Australia.

It was an exciting time for the Powerhouse team (led by Seb Chan and Erika Dicker) as they began the process of upgrading the aging Ecologic exhibition. Sydney Water was onboard as a major sponsor and the two organisations agreed that they needed a centre-piece installation that would be visually stunning and highly interactive. The brief was to entertain while helping (mostly younger) visitors understand the complexity and issues that are a part of managing Sydney’s water cycle.

Co-designing with the community

We involved a diverse group of key stakeholders and potential users in the design process from the outset, including a core team from the Powerhouse itself, educators, and a number of passionate game designers and testers aged 7-10 years old. Amongst our usual kit of exploratory design methods, we co-designed three fun and informative games in the initial Immersion workshop which led us to recognise the potential for a game based approach to this project. Through this collaborative process, we also determined that iPads were an appropriate delivery mechanism, trumping the multi-touch table that was initially proposed and a number of other ideas that were considered, such as a Waterwall.

Upon further exploration and prototyping, we settled on the concept of a simulation/management game that would challenge users to maintain the urban water system for as long as possible to support a growing population of thirsty characters. The intention was to convey the difficulty of managing all the various elements of the system (including rain water into a dam, water pumping to a local storage tower, filtration and sewage treatment, etc) while ensuring gameplay and fun wasn’t sacrificed.

Prototype driven design & development

We developed the game with the coding team at Bonobo Labs using an agile and iterative methodology, creating real working prototypes along the way – a process which is great for all design projects but no more so than for game design. This allowed us to refine, re-think and ultimately make a vast number of improvements throughout the project and constantly explore and test ideas quickly and cheaply. Critically the iterative model allowed us to prioritise features and remove the less important ones as time and budgets became tighter.

Results

The resulting game is already proving a HUGE success. Seb Chan, Head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies at the Powerhouse described the outcome as “triple thumbs up” and a teacher visiting from Sydney’s Barker College sent this great feedback: “… the Water Worx game made (the kids) realise how hard it is to manage the water supply – mission accomplished! It was a big favourite.”

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1. Turning on the Water Worx at the Powerhouse

The university has seen great success with its international recruitment program, with students from over 130 countries attending UNSW every year. They’ve positioned themselves as a top global destination of higher education for many years and have an excellent International Office to ensure this happens. However the main website previously used by the Office to reach, engage, recruit and support prospective international students had seen better days.

Throughout the project, we worked with students from Russia, Sweden, India, China, Vietnam, and of course Sydney— all users of the current International site. As a result, we were able to create a new website for UNSW International that is built entirely around end users— carefully anticipating their varying circumstances, context, needs and actions.

With a strong emphasis on student needs and an ongoing strategic content strategy designed by Digital Eskimo’s in-house team, the website sets the standard among institutions in Australia and abroad for recruiting and communicating globally with future students and other stakeholders.

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Our brief was to incorporate an interactive element in the space that would provide an informative and playful user experience while promoting TAFE Sydney Institute as the past, present and future-ready leader in vocational studies.

What better way to present an exhibition that spans 120 years than with a time travel device? Drawing on HG Wells and TRON, we designed and built the “iTime Machine” – an interactive iPad app that would allow users to to explore the Sydney Institute’s expansion of study areas through time. Taking advantage of the iPad 2’s impressive technology and performance capabilities, the app incorporates gestural navigation to move through time via a retro-futuristic “time wheel” mechanism.

Users can easily touch and spin the wheel through time, from 1891 to the future. As the user travels from 1891 to the future the iTIME machine displays each of 19 study areas as they began to be offered at Sydney Institute. With over 200 pieces of total content across all study areas, users could chose their own area of interest and select a range of content types that included student works, alumni interviews and fascinating facts about the Institute.

The TAFE iTime Machine app was the first iPad app used in an exhibit by the Sydney Institute. Its technologically advanced design complimented well with the progressive vision of TAFE NSW- Sydney Institute.

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Artistic Director, Johanna Featherstone, approached us to create a more immersive online poetry experience that better reflected the essence of the company. In particular, she wanted to further engage poetry students as part of ‘Papercuts’ -  NSW’s largest high school poetry program.

Working within significant budget constraints, we sought to maximise opportunities to improve the site’s design to ensure the best possible user experience while retaining the original look and feel. We simplified global design elements in order to draw the users attention to a new interactive poetry ‘player’ featured throughout the site which showcases written poetry, audio, video and photos.

Behind the scenes, the Red Room Company have the ability to curate poetry ‘playlists’ around common themes. We’ve also enabled the use of custom page backgrounds which add personality to the unique and interesting projects without the need for completely separate micro-sites. The updated design builds upon the previous design rather than completely replacing it, bringing the poetry to life and ensuring that the Red Room’s unique approach to poetry is complemented by an immersive and unique online presence.

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Reduce Your Footprint is aimed at reducing the ecological footprint of residents living in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. The councils had disparate and minimal online information which lacked consistency across communications.

Our collaborative Considered Design methodology allowed the project team to quickly establish a consensus and shared understanding of the project’s goals, constraints and vision across a relatively complex stakeholder ecosystem. We then worked to establish a deep understanding of resident’s current feelings towards sustainability through various design research activities including remote ethnographic in-home video diaries, co-design workshops and immersion into a number of key research papers and findings that have been conducted nationally and globally.

Based on insights gained through this process, we ultimately were able to provide a series of strategic communication recommendations, including focussing on building collaboration and engagement within the councils themselves. The communication strategy is about getting people the answers they need when they need them.

An important pillar of this strategy is the Reduce Your Footprint website, which provides an accessible place to ask and answer questions regarding living a low impact lifestyle. Importantly, residents are given access to local experts so they are able to ask much more specific (and relevant) questions to their every day sustainability challenges.

The site features a new welcoming identity that provides a single simple message for the project. A multiple channel communications mix of flyers, stickers and in-house post-it reminder notes are rolling out in the coming weeks to launch the initiative and achieve the goal of raising awareness and lowering carbon emissions in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.

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Digital channels are now a vital medium to reach and influence target audiences, but the existing Newsroom site was struggling to satisfy this demand as the university’s primary online channel for communication. Visitor numbers were declining, bounce rates rising and interaction through the site at a low. UTS needed a Newsroom that could reach out its audiences and connect UTS to the world.

During the immersion phase and throughout the project we worked with UTS to identify ways to create greater value from their existing content sources. We sought to lift the content out, give it context, and make it core to the experience of the site. Ultimately, we wanted to showcase the content that showcases UTS.

The next challenge was to ensure that the content was easily consumed by the various audiences. We applied a range of techniques and exercises, such as persona development and user flow mapping, to better understand how different audiences would interact with the Newsroom and its content. We looked to engage curators – the authorities and opinion formers of their subject area who command a loyal on and off-line following who are increasingly the gate-keepers to these audiences.

The result of this collaborative process is a refreshed Newsroom platform that allows UTS to reach out and engage with their internal, local and global audiences.

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