MY ROLE: Experience Design Director, Symplicit

Responsibilities

Client liaison and stakeholder management, managing the research team, scoping the project, planning and scheduling research work, managing the budgets, hands-on conducting research and workshops, research and design deliverables QA, process and workshop facilitation

Objectives

Improve and future-proof the NSW roads and waterways safety and disruption digital ecosystem, to ensure the right information is available in the right format, is easily accessible to the people that need it in a timely manner and is seamlessly integrated across channels and interplays with key information providers and stakeholders. (Joint initiative between RMS and The Centre for Road Safety.)

Approach

• Understand and map the digital / information ecosystem around road and waterways safety (against three key areas – speeding, drink/drug driving and fatigue) and unplanned road / waterways disruption events (against two key scenarios – bushfire and floods)
• Evaluate the general public’s level of awareness and understanding around safety and disruption messaging, and map information seeking behaviours to determine gaps and pain points
• Identify information needs and expectations for different road and waterways users and stakeholders in a range of scenarios (RMS, Centre for Road Safety, RMS Freight, TMC, NSW Maritime, commercial road users, general public road users including Aboriginal community groups, water safety partners, general public waterways users, emergency services and local councils)
• Identify improvement opportunities for effective road safety messaging and disruption management on NSW roads and waterways
• Develop future-focused recommendations for the Roads and Maritime safety and disruption digital information ecosystem
• Align business and customer needs and bring all teams’ thinking into a customer-centric mindset, to ensure the right problems are identified and the right information is delivered to different roads and waterways users in the most suitable way

Deliverables and achievements

• Conducted over 100 1:1 interviews and 10 workshops across 5 locations (Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Lismore, Wollongong and Sydney) in 6 weeks (1 week in each location), with a broad cross-section of roads and waterways users, emergency services and disruption management teams
• Worked with an Indigenous consultancy to engage with regional indigenous groups, to understand specific issues relevant to these communities
• Synthesised and analysed large volumes of data on the fly to draw out and feedback insights in real-time for the client
• Mapped the digital and information ecosystem to demonstrate touchpoints and interplays between stakeholders / roads and waterways users, and identify gaps, dependencies and critical points / needs
• Ran a series of co-creation workshops with internal stakeholders from RMS and the Centre for Road Safety to develop strategic recommendations for a future-focused, omni-channel digital information ecosystem from the research insights

Key metrics

• Number of qualitative research sessions conducted with customers against each pivot point and scenario
• Number of internal and external stakeholders participating in workshops
• All teams aligned and keeping customer needs central to decision making and solution delivery
• Right (customer) needs identified and gaps resolved in the right way to future-proof the digital ecosystem