Summary

Helping NSW turn climate information into action

I led experience design across a series of climate adaptation projects for NSW Government, helping translate complex climate projections into practical tools, services and a roadmap for action.

Working across audiences from households to government and climate specialists, we developed and tested new ways to help people understand climate risk, make better-informed decisions and prepare for a changing climate.

Year

2023–2025

Client

NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Role

Lead experience designer

Contribution

Experience strategy • Strategic design • Product design

Making climate information useful

The challenge

Preparing for climate change starts with understanding what might happen – but climate projections are complex, technical and difficult to translate into everyday decisions.

Across a series of connected projects with the NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), we explored how climate information could become more understandable and actionable for audiences ranging from households and communities to councils, government and climate specialists.

The work began with NARCliM 2.0, NSW Government’s regional climate projections program, exploring how complex climate data could be made easier to understand and use. It then expanded into a broader program focused on the tools, services and guidance people across NSW need to prepare for climate change.

The opportunity was to move beyond generic information and help people understand what climate risk meant for their own location, role or circumstances, and what they could do about it.

Understanding different levels of climate maturity

The breadth of the audience was one of the biggest challenges.

The client already had a six-part audience framework spanning people with very different levels of climate knowledge and experience. Working with the client, we developed this further by layering in information needs, motivations, trusted sources and preferred ways of engaging.

This helped us look beyond audience type alone. A household and a government employee could have different contexts but similar needs if neither felt confident interpreting climate information.

For professional audiences, the stakes were also increasing. Emerging climate-risk, governance and reporting requirements meant many needed to apply climate projections to planning, risk assessment and organisational decisions without becoming climate experts themselves.

Across the research, three needs became central: making climate information easier to understand, helping people act on it in their own context, and connecting them with knowledge and examples from others.

Developing a rich maturity model and mapping a detailed picture of audience needs and behaviours

Turning research into ideas and testable concepts

I co-developed and facilitated ideation activities with the client and stakeholders from across NSW Government and related organisations, including a large workshop with around 40 participants.

We translated research findings into focused problem statements and used structured activities to generate ideas across digital tools, services, education, practical guidance and communications.

Translating research into focused design challenges to guide ideation

Bringing stakeholders together to generate, challenge and build on ideas

From this work, I developed and prototyped concepts including an interactive climate projections map, guided risk-assessment tools and climate resilience experiences for household and professional audiences.

The design challenge was not how to present more climate information, but how to turn it into something useful – helping people understand what is happening, what it means for them, and what they should do next.

Testing these concepts with users helped us understand which ideas were useful, desirable and worth taking further.

Prototyping an interactive map to test how climate projections could become more usable and actionable

Prioritising what could make the biggest difference

The Adaptation work generated far more opportunities than the team could realistically deliver.

I synthesised outputs from research, workshops, ideation and user testing, then worked with my co-lead and the client to evaluate shortlisted initiatives against factors including user desirability, audience impact, effort, cost, technical feasibility, dependencies and existing services.

I developed one-page definitions for the priority ideas, helping make the trade-offs visible and giving the team a clearer basis for discussion.

We reviewed the emerging priorities with the client and stakeholders, incorporating feedback from development teams, subject matter experts and user testing.

The framework was not intended to calculate an automatic answer. It helped us make more informed decisions about where limited resources could have the greatest impact.

Turning ideas into decision-ready initiatives

Building a roadmap for action

I co-developed the final strategic roadmap, sequencing future products, services and enabling work across three horizons:

Help people help themselves – build strong foundations and help people understand their own context.

Support knowledge sharing – connect people, projects and practical examples.

Innovate and grow – build on those foundations with more sophisticated products and services.

The roadmap went beyond a list of ideas. Each priority described who it was for, why it mattered, what it could involve, its dependencies and where it belonged in the broader sequence.

We also mapped the roadmap against existing projects and business-as-usual commitments. This exposed some of the realities of strategic work inside a complex organisation – a small team with limited capacity, dependencies on other departments and partners, and sometimes overlapping initiatives being developed elsewhere.

The roadmap therefore became less about predicting exactly what would happen over the next five years and more about giving the team an evidence-based framework for making decisions as circumstances changed.

Sequencing what to focus on now, next and later

The outcome

Across the program, the work helped the department:

develop a richer understanding of audience needs and climate maturity
translate complex research into practical design frameworks
bring stakeholders across government together around shared opportunities
make future products and services tangible through prototypes
validate priority concepts with users
balance desirability with feasibility and organisational capacity
create a multi-year roadmap for future climate adaptation tools and services.

One of the concepts later progressed into a household climate resilience proof of concept, and the broader work has continued into a major update of the AdaptNSW website, building on the research, audience models and strategic direction established through the roadmap.

The most rewarding part of the work was helping move the conversation beyond simply providing more climate information. Across the projects, we focused on connecting information with action – helping different audiences understand what climate change could mean in their own context and giving the client a clearer framework for deciding where its effort could have the greatest impact.