Ku-ring-gai Council
Reframing ambitious climate goals from an individual burden to a benefit
Context
A proactive council on the frontlines of the climate emergency ready to take action
Sydney’s Ku-ring-gai local government area is surrounded by natural beauty. 30% of it, to be exact, is covered in native bushland — home to iconic Australian scenery, wildlife and plant life.
With the climate emergency well and truly underway, Ku-ring-gai was an area that was highly susceptible to its affects; from bushfires, to endangered species — and the Council was eager to reach Net Zero as a Local Government Area by 2040.
In March 2022 Future Friendly was commissioned to design a future vision for the Council's engagement strategy with its local residents, in a short 2-week project, to reach that net zero target.
Problem
Disengaged local residents
The challenge Ku-ring-gai Council faced was to drive environmental action and awareness in the community.
Ku-ring-gai offers many environmental initiatives — from fostering native bee-hives to sustainability rebates. But the community wasn't engaging.
While people cared about the environment, they weren’t aware many of the initiatives existed, they didn’t believe it was possible for them to make an impact, and taking action felt inconvenient and unfair without clear individual benefits.
The challenge for our team was to define how Council could better support local residents who were not engaged in environmental action. Providing a pathway for them to engage with their programs and activities — and ultimately start delivering on the community’s Net Zero targets.
Process
10 hours of 1-1 testing with local residents
Our team had two weeks to research and define how the Council could better support local residents to engage with environmental programs and activities. We had three goals during that period:
Understand target audience behaviour and barriers that prevent them from engaging with existing programs.
Research inclusively with local residents to define opportunities that solve pain points and drive positive council outcomes.
Define actionable recommendations for Council’s Enviro team to take into website enhancements phase with confidence.
Solution
From a burden to a benefit
Rather than convincing people to take action to do their part for the climate — we reframed the Council's environmental programs to describe individual benefits for residents.
I created a high fidelity, interactive prototype to bring this vision to life.
A single destination to discover programs.
When provided with a single ‘activity hub’, residents were quickly able to decide what programs and activities they might want to get involved in.
They were able to compare and assess what was feasible for them and what they were interested in. This afforded them the curiosity to move forward through the experience to explore relevant programs in more detail.
.webp)
Easily find what’s right for you.
The ability to refine programs using personal attributes, such as interests, lifestyle and location were seen as highly valuable and useful aids for finding relevant activities.
Residents reported that the more relevant an activity was to them, the more motivated they were to explore it further and potentially take part in it.
A clear value proposition for every program.
Providing residents with a consistent program page design allowed the user to quickly understand the value proposition of the program, including the personal benefit to them, wider purpose for the community, logistical details and call-to-action for an activity or program.
“I want to sign up. I want to get involved tomorrow. I didn’t know these activities were possible.”
— User research participant responding to our prototype
Impact
Reignited community participation
The council responded positively to our short project, commenting that our approach was a “really great way to consolidate concepts, ideas and next steps that are relevant to our whole team instead of working individually in bits and pieces."
This project went on to win a GOLD Good Design Award® for Design Strategy.
In September 2022, I worked on the next phase of this project: turning the concept into a reality. That build-project was another success, with the council's new site launching in Jan 2023.
In Dec 2023, the website and its programs were recognised at the Local Government NSW Excellence in the Environment Awards; winning the overall Communication, Education and Empowerment category which recognises ‘outstanding initiatives that have informed the community and increased people's capacity to be active participants in moving society towards sustainability’.