Yarra Riverkeeper Association Future Experience

How it began 🎬

During my third year at RMIT University, I decided to do the Design Action Program also known as the DAP. I had the opportunity to have The Common Purpose Collective as my host organisation. I was part of their team for a project with The Yarra Riverkeeper Association (YRKA). The aim of the project was to hold a workshop session with different people from the organisation, learn more about the constituents (stakeholders of the YRKA), identify the opportunities in the current experience journey and propose new experiences to increase the engagement level of constituents with the YRKA.

The design process ⏳

As part of the project a constituent experience workshop was carried out. The workshop was facilitated by the Yarra Riverkeeper Association. The Common Purpose Collective team was invited to participate. Using the design thinking process, we created different personas and empathy maps to know what the different constituents say, think, feel and do. Then we visualised the current experience (As-Is Experience) and future potential journeys (To-Be Experience).

After the workshop, I worked with my supervisor Darren Sutton to design posters that will help communicates what was done in the workshop. We communicated with the team from the Yarra Riverkeeper, sharing drafts of the proposed journey and getting feedback on them. These posters were to be used by the YRKA. We had to analyse what was written on the post-it notes, identifies the key customer actions and creates a meaningful experience journey. The three main constituents that we focused on were: members, sponsors and volunteers. Each required different incentives as each have different needs and want.

The Outcome 📸

Click here to view posters in detail

Personal learnings 🌱

I learned a lot in this project. I learned about:

• The Yarra Riverkeeper Association
• How organisations collaborate with each other in practice
• New methods of identifying opportunities during the workshop
• New ways of storytelling (Reach, Research, Realisation, Action and Advocate)
• To adapt to a new working environment.

I also got the opportunity to:

• Meet new people who are passionate about the environment, innovation and human-centred design
• Learn from professionals of different backgrounds (not necessarily with a design background)
• Push my design skills and learn new ones along the way

Doing a placement before graduating is definitely something that I will recommend people to do if they have the chance as it reinforces what you are really passionate about, reveals your strengths and weaknesses, gives a taste of what your future might look like and meets new people.