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About
Growing Up in New Zealand is the country’s largest contemporary longitudinal study of child development, tracking the lives of more than 6,000 Kiwi children born in 2009 and 2010 to discover what life is like growing up in New Zealand today. The findings of the study influence research, policy and services to improve the wellbeing of all New Zealand children and their whānau.
The University of Auckland secured additional funding from MBIE in 2019 to undertake a new and innovative approach to enhance data collection and analysis as part of the Our Voices project.
Challenge
The participants of the study were on the cusp of entering their teenage years. Having been a part of the study for their whole lives, the Our Voices research team was considering how they could maintain and develop their engagement in the study as they grow up and their interests diversify. Given the young participants are growing up as digital natives, the team wanted to consider more innovative ways of collecting participant information that are relevant and meaningful for the young people in the study, while also ensuring that their needs are understood and met. The team were also interested to explore other ways to connect with study participants outside of face-to-face interviews, which became particularly relevant as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Approach
The team wanted to ensure that we understood the needs and context of the participants and their whānau so that this could be fed into the end output to be developed and trialed with the participants. Merkle worked with the Our Voices team as well as Rākau Tautoko to develop a four-day co-design session plan. The team then hosted twenty-five rangatahi (approx. 12 years old) and some of their whānau at the University as they engaged in structured and free play, waiata and facilitated workshop activities to help answer the question, “How can we help the Prime Minister know whether Aotearoa New Zealand is a good place to grow up?”
Throughout the four days, the team worked through many topics with the participants, including what type of questions should be asked, how they would be asked and how te ao Māori should be represented in anything that was created. The approach also involved Merkle testing the concept that was created with rangatahi as well as carrying out usability testing of the final prototype before build work commenced.
University of Auckland’s Amelia Willems, Research Delivery Manager, says:
“What I particularly appreciated and valued in working with Merkle was the people – their confidence, warmth and the willingness to engage with the ambiguity and complexity of what we were doing. Everything was done with honesty and integrity, always keeping in mind what was best for us and the outcomes we needed. Our shared passion and values really drove everything forward.
I really valued having Merkle’s guidance to lead us in the right direction and help us to see what was possible with our ideas and the ideas of these young people. Merkle showed us how we could make it happen.”
Result
Merkle worked to synthesise all the outputs from the sessions and make recommendations to the research team on a wide variety of elements including:
- How and how often the children wanted to interact with a digital app
- How it should make them feel when they are using it
- Where and how to use gamification to drive engagement
- Mapping out the journeys the participants would take with the app, covering everything from signing up to answering questions.
Merkle worked with a senior learning designer to create a concept that would take participants on a waka journey of discovery: navigating between islands to answer survey questions, meeting characters, sharing knowledge, and unlocking fun mini games. This was concept tested with 11–16-year-olds to validate our interpretation of the outputs of the co-design sessions. This was well received, and initial designs were then created by the Dentsu Creative team and were heavily influenced by te ao Māori culture and iconography. The research team then engaged Method to build the app, which has received great feedback from the cohort on their experience with it during the pilot.
Professor Susan Morton, Director of Auckland University’s Centre for Longitudinal Research and the Foundation Director for Growing Up in New Zealand, says:
“The Our Voices project was an ambitious project for academics to undertake, and we could not have achieved the results without Merkle’s expertise and partnership.
Working with external experts allowed us to enact our vision rapidly while maintaining fidelity with the overarching goal of the research team to find context relevant and better ways to hear from the members of the cohort directly, and to collect novel information to assist the University of Auckland team with understanding what really shapes rangatahi wellbeing and what might be done to improve wellbeing for every child born in NZ today.
The initial engagement also helped us to release a Covid survey to the cohort in 2020, which would not have been possible in the timeframe without the trusted relationships established with Merkle as part of the Our Voices project.”
Amelia Willems adds: “The feedback we have received so far is that it is everything we were hoping for: this unique, it’s different, it’s fun, safe and secure, and it can provide us the qualitative insights we were looking for. Everyone is really excited about it, and it has also had some recognition on the international stage from other longitudinal studies around the world,”
Merkle is very proud to have worked with the Growing Up in New Zealand team as well as the wider Our Voices team from the University of Auckland and all the other parties involved to explore new and exciting ways of collecting and analysing wellbeing information. Using human-centred design methodologies, we collaborated on an outcome for both the research team and the participants that has been well received during the pilot and is due to launch to the wider cohort in 2023.
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Merkle is a performance marketing agency with a 32-year track record of helping the best brands in the world create personalised experiences at every stage of the customer life cycle. As experts in data and technology, the agency helps organisations to transform their end-to-end customer experience. The team have strong strategic partnerships with Salesforce.com, Adobe and Google, allowing them to design, implement and manage the best customer experience solutions for clients.
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