Our team broke down the brief into key terms to deepen our understanding before diving any further into the design process. We looked at existing literature on these topics along with some related topics on online community creation.

Understanding these definitions gave us valuable insights into the dynamics within communities, which greatly informed our initial progress in the discovery phase of the project. For instance, we learned that group size significantly impacts engagement and cohesion. In larger groups, members are more likely to adopt an "audience" role, waiting for others to post, which can reduce overall engagement.

In addition to reviewing the brief, we explored the ABC, our collaborator, to better understand their extensive ecosystem. With so many services and functions, it was challenging to keep track of everything. Creating a mind map gave us a high-level overview of their core components and ultimately guiding our research approach. This led us to ABC Local, an initiative that segments news by suburb and highlights local stories.

Through ABC Local, we discovered a strong demand for community-focused content, despite ABC only featuring news from official journalists.

With a clearer understanding of the brief and our collaborator, our team set out to explore current practices and initiatives. We examined media companies that engage in community-driven initiatives. To ensure a broader perspective, we expanded our scope beyond Australia.

We still needed a deeper understanding of user behavior and engagement within online communities. This led us to conduct interviews and surveys.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 participants aged 20–30. We selected this age group because, according to ABC, they represent a key target audience that has limited engagement with ABC’s current offerings. The interviews explored four main areas:

1. Why users seek out online communities
2. How user define online community
3. Concerns and challenges of participating in these spaces
4. Users interacting online and its consequent effects on their offline relationships

Through the interviews, we were able to formulate more targeted questions for a larger survey of around 70 participants. These surveys were distributed accross reddit, quora, and instagram.

-Users prefer to use smartphones to access online communities
-Majority would join a new platform if it discussed topic of their interest
-Majority trust other users and take their opinions at face value
- People are engaged because they want to learn and share their knowledge

We laid out the platform's information architecture in order to establish a clear structure for the content and functionality. This ensures that the organization of information was intuitive and aligns with the needs of our users and our research insights.

Overall, I am very pleased with the outcome of this project. As the culmination of my Master’s program, it was the first time we had full control to plan each step of the process ourselves. By balancing our team’s strengths, we were able to assign the right member to each phase, ensuring a mostly smooth project. However, if I could do something differently, I would have wanted to allocate more time for iteration. Although our solution was strongly grounded in research, additional iterations before presenting to the ABC Digital Team could have refined our approach and potentially led to an even stronger final outcome.

After our ideation session, we hit a creative wall. To reset, our team decided to meet in a new location for a change of scenery, which made a big difference. This experience taught me that it’s okay to feel stuck—sometimes all it takes is a change of environment to spark fresh ideas and get back on track. Being a designer also means staying flexible, as things won’t always go as planned.

When I presented to the ABC team, I only had 10 minutes to convey months of work. Imagine the challenge—how do you distill everything down while still making an impact? This experience taught me that being a designer also means being a skilled storyteller and understanding your audience. I had to carefully craft a clear, engaging narrative and adjust my approach to ensure the key insights and solutions resonated with the ABC team. I realized that storytelling isn’t just about presenting; it’s about tailoring your message to make your work meaningful and memorable to others.