Challenge
The National Trust (NT) is a charitable organisation in the UK whose principle role is to preserve historic buildings and conserve areas of natural beauty through donations, membership and admission to its many properties. NT wanted a new app that focused on retaining members by encouraging them to discover new places and things to do to make the most of their membership.
Outcome
Global marketing and technology agency DigitasLBi worked carefully to create a coherent multi-platform app that focused on three key user needs: discovering new places, events and bookmarking places to visit. The interface design sensitively balanced visual consistency with maintaining the different user interface patterns of iOS, Android and Windows platforms. Furthermore, the app thoughtfully weighed the benefits of geo-location based content against the need for smart caching of content where there is no Internet connection.
Downloadable Resource
The Journey Map below is based on one of the National Trust's 'Active Amy Persona'. Click on it to see a more detailed version.
Challenge
In 2015, the BBC and Coolabi Productions re-introduced Clangers – a beloved British stop motion classic children’s television series of short stories about a family of mouse-like creatures who live on, and inside a moon-like planet. The original series was originally broadcast between 1969-1972. For the new series, Peg Digital, a specialist games design company was commissioned to create an online interactive game as a complimentary educational resource aimed at three to six year olds.
Outcome
The new series is beautifully realised, keeping the visual quality of the hand made knitted characters but updated through better lighting design and smoother stop-motion animation. Peg Digital decided to make heavy use of rich character animation and bring in many of the show’s beautifully realised locations and sets. The final game is an interactive, explorative experience in which the player helps four Clangers, one-by-one to find and mend objects that have been blown around and damaged by gusts of wind on the Clangers’ planet.
Online Resources
The video gives an an introduction to the game and you can also play it online on the BBC's CBBC website. Play game >>
Challenge
In early 2014 DNA, a customer experience and innovation design company based in Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand was commissioned by Immigration New Zealand to conduct in-depth user research and redesign their information service website (www.immigration.govt.nz/). The DNA team had to confront internal perceptions around their customers and turn an extremely complicated set of rules and information about visa eligibility into new and positive experiences for customers. The aim was to help customers navigate these complexities by showing them only relevant options based on their current situations.
Outcome
The new Immigration New Zealand (INZ) website has been completely redesigned to be customer centric and is built around six customer motivations: Visit, Study, Work, Live Permanently, Joining Family or Starting a Business. It has been built on the primary principles of clarity, reassurance and transparency. One of the key tenets of the design is to allow users to explore and compare options for both current and potential future situations. The challenge for the project team was to offer customers a range of experiences. It had to balance offering clear and credible information for customers going through a visa application while at the same time projecting aspirational and guiding aspects to customers looking to migrate for lifestyle reasons.
Downloadable Resource
DNA created a very detailed journey map for each of their personas illustrating their complete experience of the service, starting from the triggers to their decision to apply for a visa, to how they might investigate their options to applying online and the post experience. Anja is a twenty year-old student from Hamburg, looking to study computer graphics in Wellington. This map showed her journey mapped against a timeline and how she might feel at different times of the service experience.
Challenge
As the gateway to Western Australia, Perth Airport plays a significant role in the State’s economic, social and cultural activities by facilitating travel and employment, connecting people and places, and providing support for communities. To cope with the ever-increasing needs and expectations of today’s business and leisure traveller, Perth Airport’s historic AUD $1 billion redevelopment, which has transformed terminal facilities and the customer experience across the airport estate. The existing website was a number of years old, had limited capability to meet mobile technology requirements and did not reflect Perth Airport’s physical transformation of the customer experience and new product offering.
Outcome
The newly designed site is fully responsive and mobile friendly to meet Perth Airport’s ever growing mobile audience, which accounted for approximately 65% of website sessions, overtaking desktop traffic in June 2014. The website was designed in-line with the needs of the business and its customers. It sat on a content management system (CMS) capable of IP and cookie based personalisation to allow Perth Airport to target its website visitors with relevant information and offers. The new website was designed around the key insight that facilitating a more relaxed state of mind for the passenger, improves the overall user experience and in turn increases the propensity for non-aeronautical spend within the airport environment.
Downloadable Resources
Workshops were held with various user groups which led to the creation of personas to identify opportunities and direct design decisions. Here is a detailed persona for the fly-in fly-out user group.
Detailed user journeys for the four key user groups were created for Perth Airport. The user journeys were not only used to understand what the passengers might be doing, thinking and feeling, they were also used to identify business opportunities for the client..
Challenge
This self-initiated studio project challenged the team at Komodo Digital to create a secure real-time low cost aerial surveillance system aimed at law enforcement and counter terrorist organisations. The team were briefed to create an app that could deliver high quality live images from a drone to a police officer’s phone. The brief had a number hurdles for the team to overcome including understanding the various scenarios in which a drone might be used, near real-time stitching and secure sharing of high resolution images, and seamless software integration with a police force’s own information system. The ultimate, challenge was to create a minimum viable product (MVP) that could be demonstrated to law enforcement agencies with a view to making this a successful new start up venture for Komodo Digital.
Outcome
‘Overwatch’ is an iOS based application that allows a police operator to create and fly efficient autonomous missions that gather high quality photographic intelligence. The images are encrypted and sent to a secure server before being automatically attached to a police incident record for rapid sharing amongst the operational team. This was all achieved without the time consuming need for the drone to land before manually downloading the images. Apart from speed, the solution provides a much more cost effective way to gain aerial intelligence of an incident that would otherwise require the use of police helicopters. A working prototype was created in approximately four months of studio time in between working on other client projects.
Challenge
The Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design’s (CIID) award winning consultancy team worked with the Rockwool Foundation and Social innovation expert Jennie Winhall to look at redesigning the youth unemployment service of young vulnerable people. Their particular challenge was how to create a sustainable service that builds the capabilities, sense of direction and motivation of vulnerable young people who have been unable to engage in sustained work and education.
Outcome
The new service, named NExTWORK, aimed to increase the number of opportunities available to unemployed young people by offering a network service and a new way for company leaders and young people to meet. The overall goal of the unemployment service is to reduce the number of young people on social benefits by getting them into permanent jobs or to start and sustain education. The core structure of the service consisted of a network of companies who were willing to offer internship opportunities and a group of young people who need to go through a developmental journey to find permanent jobs or education. The young people could rotate among the companies to help them develop a range of new skills and relations. A supporting tracking system allowed the companies, youth workers and the young people to track their own development in terms of employability, persistence and mental resilience. The final part of the service was an additional support system that revolved around monthly company network meetings and weekly meetings between the young people. The companies met to share their experiences, develop their leadership capabilities and ability to lead the group of young people and move them on to new work opportunities. The weekly meetings allowed the young people to reflect and learn from their own and each other’s challenges and success in the workplace.
Challenge
The National Aquarium Denmark ‘Den Blå Planet‘ (The Blue Planet) opened in 2013 to great public success, attracting twice as many visitors as had been predicted. However, it also became apparent that there were a number of early teething issues with the design of the exhibitions that need resolving. Firstly, better way finding was required to navigate the complex building. Secondly, information relating to the contents of each aquarium was printed and could not easily be updated when new species were added. Finally, some of the physically exhibits that taught visitors about sea life were frequently broken and needed a more durable solution.
Outcome
Architecture and exhibition design agency Atelier Brückner (ATB) was commissioned by The Blue Planet to resolve these issues. ATB invited digital design agency YOKE to become their digital media partner in both the planning and concept stage of the project and the design and development of the final interactive exhibits. YOKE created six innovative interactive installations, a content management system (CMS) for the touchscreens and an app to work within the overarching new exhibition design developed by Atelier Brückner.
Challenge
The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California wanted to create interactive installations to introduce visitors to the concept of synthetic biology. The subject matter is particularly challenging, firstly introducing fundamental building blocks of organic biology before introducing ‘what-if’ scenarios involving concepts from synthetic biology. The Tech Museum also serves a diverse audience and the exhibits had to be designed with visitors as young as eight years old in mind — however, care was also required to make sure that the experiences could hold the interest of teenagers and adults too.
Outcome
Local Projects created the BioDesign Studio – four unique interactive exhibits, each requiring its own custom-built hardware and software solution. The Creature Creation exhibit enabled visitors to create and test new virtual life forms by snapping together physical pieces of magnetic DNA. The Living Colors Lab exhibit used projection mapping to guide visitors through a real-world lab experiment mixing DNA into bacteria to create new glowing colours visualized by thousands of petri dishes. The Pattern Design exhibit enabled visitors to take control of the rules behind nature’s emergent systems in order to design new coat patterns on life-size animal sculptures. And finally the Exponential Self exhibit enabled visitors to experience the magnitude of exponential growth first-hand by embodying a cell and using gestures to initiate cellular division until a massive colony of their cellular likeness filled a screen.
Online Resource
The video opposite gives a an overview of four unique exhibits created for the BioDesign Studio.
Challenge
The BBC’s Newsbeat service, a mainstream news product curated for 16-24 year-olds, was looking tired and needed a fresh approach to re-engage with its audience. The Newsbeat editorial team also felt that their delivery platform needed rethinking too. Moving Brands (MB), an independent global creative company, was invited to work alongside the BBC’s user experience and design team to create a branding solution that like the service, would be vibrant, young and distinct.
Outcome
A stylish and visually sophisticated brand, whose values were also reflected in its interactive behaviours. The integrated design team delivered brand guidelines, animated idents, interactive and video prototypes for a native app and new website. The team saw the app as the primary platform for news delivery and discussion for this audience.
Online Resources
The video shows the development of the project and whilst the GIF animation of the identity illustrates how animation may represent a shift in editiorial tone between news stories...
Challenge
Wolff Olins were invited back by Brazilian telecommunications giant Oi to refresh their brand, which the agency had originally designed in 2001. During the interim, Oi had transitioned from being a spirited outsider to becoming the market leader and were taking the next step on their journey, moving further into creating services and experiences for its customers. Wolff Olins were asked to help the brand reflect the more digital, fluid and personalised role that Oi now played in their lives. Oi had developed new offers, including TV and content services, which were more focused on what customers wanted. They needed a brand refresh that could signal this change in offer and work with bundles that include content services. The original logo was built for static applications so the new brand needed to interact with customers on all kinds of devices and environments in playful and functional ways.
Outcome
The original logo, called the ‘blobble’, was inspired by the used of speech bubbles to represent the voice of the customer. The new solution built on this idea and created a new identity where the logo’s shape and colour directly reacted to the unique sound of a customer’s voice. A quiet, low voice generated a calm blue logo whereas a loud, high voice created a more wild and colourful symbol. Wolff Olins developed a design system around this user-generated identity, which kept the customer at the centre but felt more contemporary and genuine. The new photography style was more at home in the world of Instagram and Snapchat, and new typeface and specially designed family of icons added a functional, no-nonsense sensibility to balance the fluidity of the logo.
Challenge
To explore the centenary of a tumultuous decade of change in Ireland 1913–1923, researchers from Boston College Ireland wanted to re-tell those ten important years of Irish history through the modern lens of digital media. Funded by the Irish government’s Department of the Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and hosted by national television broadcaster RTÉ, the ambition was to create a digital newspaper and online resource that would publish fortnightly issues supplemented by daily social media posts to relive key events and give a general taste of Irish life from a century ago.
Outcome
CenturyIreland is the largest and most ambitious public history website of its kind in the world. Digital agency Kooba, designed and developed a fully responsive content managed website with integrated social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The solution allowed Boston College researchers to create and publish issues rich with multimedia content, which brought significant events to life from a century ago. The project is intended to run for ten years from 2013–2023.
Online Resource
http://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/
https://www.facebook.com/CenturyIreland/
Challenge
Singapore celebrated its 50 years of independence on August 9th, 2015. To commemorate this momentous event, the Singaporean government commissioned a range of ambitious year-long events, activities and performances that culminated in a £9.6m ($15m) public celebration in November 2015. BLACK (a Singapore based creative agency) and Ong&Ong (an architectural firm) were invited to propose and execute a creative community project that reflected residents’ memories of places in Singapore where they lived and played. It had to reflect the changes that have taken place over the last 50 years by capturing what the community holds dear, such as the notion of home, friendships and places. The project also had to capture and share future dreams and aspirations of residents. It was also important that it actively engaged residents, both young and old to participate in the year-long engagement through various community-based projects.
Outcome
The idea was manifested in three overarching stages – Collaborate, Connect, Celebrate. The SG Heart Map web portal enabled Singapore residents to contribute stories of their favourite places in Singapore. The portal also served as an interactive and fun platform that let viewers ‘track’ these popular places, connect with fellow locals through their shared memories and build a powerful database that mapped Singapore’s growth through it’s 50 years of independence. In total, over 100,000 stories were collected and 50 of the most endearing places emerged, creating a first-of-its-kind, crowdsourced map of Singapore. Additionally, the SG Heart Map project included collaborations involving seven lead curators and artists working closely with the community to translate their personal stories into new artworks. The end result of the public’s contributions and co-creation efforts were brought together and showcased in the SG Heart Map Festival, which formed part of the SG50 finale event.
Online Resources
Video explanation of how the project worked:
