CASE STUDY
Bringing a student voice into the ANU Student First program
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When starting the Student First program examining the design research work done to date at ANU, the Deloitte Digital team realised there were gaps — in particular, there was little research which had been conducted directly with students to understand their experiences at ANU.
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We designed and completed a four-month research program including guerrilla research, 50 student interviews and a week-long online Instagram diary study, as well as a series of tech discovery interviews with relevant staff.
This initial phase was focused upon domestic undergraduate students who live on or off campus.
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As a Service Design Lead, I co-led the Deloitte Digital design team of 7 within the full team of 10. This meant I designed and conducted research with students and staff and oversaw synthesis of the research data.
My strengths in content helped contribute to the clarity of the synthesised insights — including the ‘moments that matter’ to students, research-led design principles and tech issues themes — and the overall quality of the discovery report.
With thanks to
Alex Mironov, Director; Steve Brewer, Project Lead; Maddie O’Connor, Delivery Lead; Fenali Bhagat, Business Analyst; Jas Soh, Service Design Lead; Melanie Ngo, Service Designer; Jaeho Choi, UX/Service Designer; Erica Bell, Graduate; Stephanie Beer, Graduate; and an engaged client team. -
Even though we were delayed with approval to conduct the research, we delivered the program of work, the report, service blueprint and roadmap recommendations on time, to the client’s great satisfaction, which sets up the Student First program for long-term success.
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"This is the most thorough and meaningful student research we have done to date.”
Maryanne Dever
Pro Vice Chancellor
Education & Digital -
“This sets a new standard for student engagement we will use going forward.”
Jonathan Churchill
Chief Information Officer -
“The final deliverable is the best I have seen produced by a consultancy ever.”
Scott Pearsall
Registrar
CASE STUDY
Living in NSW:
Detangling Strata
A Discovery research and ideation project
as part of the Living in NSW, Life Journeys team.
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Strata governs how 1 in 5 NSW residents live today, rising to 1 in 2 by 2040 — yet it's one of the most complex, fragmented service ecosystems in government, spanning a dozen agencies and every stage from planning to renewal. The one existing digital touchpoint, Strata Hub, was a new service and only captured data from schemes; it returned nothing useful back to the people living in strata. Rather than simply iterate Strata Hub, our first goal was to step back and deliver deep and broad, platform-agnostic view of the problem state before proposing solutions.
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We ran a human-centred Discovery: 41 one-to-one interviews with owners, renters, investors and managers, a 559-respondent survey, and engagement with peak bodies and academia, layered over deep ecosystem mapping. From that we built a shared model of the strata lifecycle, personas and pain points, then developed four prioritised, platform-agnostic concepts ready for future delivery teams to pick up.
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I led service design on the project, directing a small internal team. I was responsible for the ecosystem mapping, personas, lifecycle framework and concept development, with three designers supporting note-taking and synthesis. As a team we also facilitated an ideation session, with different subject matter experts across NSW Government to help create and define the new digital services.
With thanks to: Jacqui Alexander, Director Service Design, Hamish Housego, Service Designer
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The report gave the NSW Strata and Property Services Commissioner's office independent, evidence-based validation of the direction they were considering pursuing, directly informing the case for law reform. With no confirmed owner for the work post-Discovery (a change in NSW Government left the project without a receiving team), I authored a detailed, standalone Design Resources handover pack — principles, personas, lifecycle and service blueprint — so any future team could pick up the work without losing momentum.
Reading this report it was really gratifying to see real-life validation of what we have suspected strongly . . . this report verifies and expands upon what the Strata and Property Services Commissioner is trying to do, the direction we're driving and the assumptions we've been making about the need, the future needs of strata, the expectations and sort of law reform and so on within government. I've just found it really, really good and I really like the way you've organized it for us. So many thanks. Great work!
— Lachlan Malloch, Principal Advisor to the NSW Government Strata Commissioner
CASE STUDY
Mapping six different customer groups’ experiences
of the same environmental application process.
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Nook Studios were tasked by the Dept. of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE) with mapping the Environment Protection (Sea Dumping) Act permit application process and conducting research to identify areas of confusion and where improvements could be made.
The Sea Dumping Act is one piece of legislation covering activities including: sea burials, placing artificial reefs, placing dredged material, scuttling vessels and other man-made structures (such as decommissioning oil and gas rigs).
And so, we needed to conduct research with six very different applicant groups, to understand what could be improved about the process for each group. -
We first mapped the information experience and process through desktop research. Then, through a series of 19, 1-on-1 interviews with permit applicants we were able to document the process for each customer group, and include our insights and recommendations for improvements.
We added further insights through 7 interviews with other related areas in the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, including the Great Barrier Marine Park Authority. -
As the Service Design Lead, I designed and conducted the research, synthesised the findings and developed the customer journey artefacts and wrote the final report.
In developing the report I also carried out the information journey analysis, which was enriched in its content recommendations through my understanding of the Australian Government Style Guide and design patterns.
Also thanks to
Mel Flanagan, Design Director; Gillian Moran, Graphic Designer and our client partners at DAWE.. -
Our client partner was thrilled with the work, especially the robust strength of the evidence base and ideas for improvement, which gave them an extended backlog of initiatives to improve the process.
CLIENT FEEDBACK
“The Nook Studios team brought great energy, passion and knowledge to a project that didn’t have enough time, had a lot of technical information that needed to be absorbed and stakeholders operating in diverse settings. They listened to us, thought through what we needed and were flexible about how to support the goals of the project.
They delivered on time and on budget. The final report project products were terrific — really good quality, innovative and useful. This work has set us up to improve our business well into the future”
— Peter McLoughlin, Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment