Love Better: Supporting youth with a dynamic, digital experience
Overview
As part of the Ministry of Social Development’s extensive youth campaign, Love Better is an interactive and lively web experience designed for Aotearoa’s young people, helping them to navigate the tricky world of love and relationships in the 21st century.
Client
Ministry of Social Development
Technologies/Services
Silverstripe
Silverstripe Cloud
ViteJS
TypeScript
Tailwind CSS
Docker
Supporting New Zealand’s youth
Government services are all too easily associated with roads, rubbish and healthcare, but our wellbeing and happiness goes beyond these simple metrics. In a bid to extend the support to our country's up and coming generation, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) launched its Love Better primary prevention campaign, aimed at fostering safe, positive and equal relationships.
MSD has committed to a multi-phase campaign, partnering with advertising agency Clemenger BBDO to roll out the phases via a series of digital and in-person channels. The Love Better website was to become the central repository for all key information and messaging. It was to leverage the content partnership with Vice and showcase engaging social media content.
Voyage was chosen to lead the website project, and chose to bring on Not Another as the design partner. This decision was a no-brainer, with Not Another behind successful and arguably sensitive projects such as ‘Porn Week’, ‘Dial it Down Aotearoa’ and ‘Closed to Harassment’.
Through the discovery phase it became clear that the website had to be as accessible as possible and required an empathetic approach as it would cater to both young and potentially vulnerable or underserved groups. Voyage was able to make use of extensive research MSD had completed to establish the campaign as a whole, which included sentiments, desires and difficulties of young people in NZ. Ultimately, the website had to provide not only essential information, but leave users feeling reassured and informed for all things relationships and breakups. For this project Voyage and Not Another worked closely together, bringing together a wealth of expertise for development and design.
“Youth relationships can be intense and unpredictable. With the Love Better website, our goal is to give young New Zealanders the tools to build safe and positive relationships that will support them throughout their lives. With the Ministry of Social Development, we’re very fortunate to have had a client that was very eager for us to push the boundaries and break traditional government campaign moulds. They trusted us, and the result is all something we’re incredibly proud of.”
Ryan O'Hara - Director, Voyage - Director
Making human-centered design centre stage
To create a website that is warm, engaging, interactive and visually appealing, this project required a human-centred design approach and focus on user experience. As a focal point for the broader Love Better campaign, the website had to be a central repository for the content across social media, while also offering a vast array of information and insights across the topics of love, dating, relationships and breakups.
Taking an emphatic and user-centric approach meant starting with MSD research on New Zealand’s young people to understand their needs, preferences and pain points, and also emphasised language and accessibility measures for vision and hearing-impaired users. Given the target demographic was those living in Aotearoa, Māori & English translations were also a priority.
The design phase included wireframing and prototyping to achieve the best possible flow of information, ensuring site visitors could easily find the information they need, with clever and unexpected elements making the website engaging, intuitive and memorable.
“We knew that if this project had even a sniff of a government vibe to it, youth would immediately switch off. To truly connect with youth, it had to break away from conventional web design and feel as engaging as the apps and social media they use every day. We’re proud to have created something that meets that challenge.”
Mark Townshend - Creative Director, Not Another
Technical prowess and clever solutions, a match made in heaven
With an agile delivery process and two-week sprints, Voyage maintained continuous delivery and ample testing, with the ability to action changes and pivots as required. Everything was built to ensure ongoing ease and quality of deployments. Silverstripe CMS met the needs of the site, and being a Silverstripe Partner proved helpful in understanding how best to bring the vision to life.
Through Silverstripe, Voyage utilised customised content models, including complex features such as polls, quizzes and the opportunity for visitors to the site to express their own thoughts or feelings. On the frontend, modern build tools helped to realise the overall vision. Everything was designed to be easy to manage from the backend, with the MSD team able to update and edit content as needed.
As accessibility was a key element of the build, Voyage worked to the NZ Government Web Accessibility 1.1 and Web Usability 1.3 standards, teaming up with the MSD accessibility team to ensure coding standards were met.
“Regular communication and iterative feedback loops, as well as an agile development approach, was crucial in addressing evolving needs, delivering a solution that was on time, within budget, and perfectly aligned with the client's vision. On a personal level I'm incredibly proud to be part of a NZ first primary prevention campaign that will make a real difference with youth. If I had a resource like this when I was 18 it would have really helped answer questions I didn't know I had around identity and relationships.”
Phillip Gray - Senior Developer, Voyage
Thousands flock to the dynamic, digital experience
MSD wanted the Love Better website to be not only informative but captivating, and support Kiwi youth in one of the biggest parts of life: love and relationships. Voyage’s development expertise and Not Another’s creative abilities realised a site that is interactive, animated and visually relevant to the audience. Our next generation can learn, feel empowered, and share with their peers.
With thousands of visitors flocking to the site and positive, 'heartwarming' feedback filtering in, this project proves that a well considered, human-centric approach to design and development can realise powerful outcomes.
“Once the designs were complete, Voyage got to work building a site that not only exceeded our expectations in terms of look and feel, but also met the high privacy, security and accessibility standards required as a government agency. The team were patient, understanding and willing to engage in conversations and tasks that could be confusing and frustrating – a true testament to their skillsets. We can’t recommend Voyage enough for their incredible tech skills and knowledge base and thank them for their heartfelt contribution to supporting the young people of Aotearoa New Zealand.”
Cherie Knights - Senior Advisor, Ministry of Social Development
