The zoological facility and attraction, the North Sea Oceanarium, in Hirtshals, is filled with knowledge about the North Sea, aquariums with sunfish and seals, and interactive digital installations. With the second phase of their new exhibition, Hunters of the North Sea, almost ready to launch, they wish to align their communication across all their channels to provide a more cohesive experience. The Oceanarium has many different senders speaking on all their channels, e.g. marketing, biologists, school-service, guides etc., so the posts may not give the streamlined and consistent expression that is desired. They wish to develop a communication strategy in order to achieve a recognizable voice that conveys a clear message to all potential and current guests.
– U-CrAc group 14
Mads Schon Wettergren Poulsen, mswp15@student.aau.dk
Mikkel Aagaard Bækgaard, maba14@student.aau.dk
Natascha Quach Hougaard, nhouga18@student.aau.dk
Sara Primdahl Rasmussen, spra14@student.aau.dk
Sine Bjerregaard, sbjerr15@student.aau.dk
Concept video
With the knowledge gathered from observations, interviews and feedback from the employees, it is clear that the current communication strategy is missing a place where the employees can share new ideas, frustrations and informations etc. that is relevant for all the employees at the Oceanarium. Therefore, our concept is based on communication between the employees at the Oceanarium. With a digital internal communication platform, we believe it will become easier to convey to all employees, a complete understanding of what is going on at the North Sea Oceanarium, enabling the employees to streamline the external communication.
Design process
Week 1
Over the course of the UCrAc workshop we have made use of different tools and methods.
The process started out with our first meetings with our case partner, The North Sea Oceanarium, where the case was introduced. It gave a short insight into the different challenges they faced.
To get a more thorough understanding of the challenges, we gathered data and information by conducting interviews with employees and guests of the North Sea Oceanarium. We interviewed the Marketing Director, Sylvia Berglund, and Marketing Coordinator & Graphic Support, Marie Louise Højer Pedersen, the PhD-fellow, Vashanth Selvadurai, the biologist and development director, Kristina Ydesen and two of the staff at the infodesk and shop, Tina Sigsgaard and Karen Nielsen. During the interviews, we gathered information about the North Sea Oceanarium in general, information about their marketing strategies, information about the exhibitions and the animals, but also about their views on both the internal and external communication of the Oceanarium. We also gathered information about the guests’ expectations before their visit at the Oceanarium, and whether these expectations were met. Beyond the interviews, we also made observations in the Oceanarium by both walking around and being stationed at different places.
We gathered all of the data and information that we accumulated during our interviews and through our observations in an affinity map using post-its to visualize the process.
From our affinity map, we extracted the different problems and challenges that we observed. We separated the different problems and challenges into before, during and after a visit at the North Sea Oceanarium.
At this point we could clearly observe an ongoing problem; the Oceanarium is having difficulty attracting people from Northern Jutland to the Oceanarium. Our main idea track, therefore, became how to create more awareness about the North Sea Oceanarium in order to attract people from the rest of Northern Jutland. Another challenge that also became clear was that some communication was missing or got lost between the departments etc., which created misunderstandings between departments.
With all the data in mind we created some innovation tracks that were relevant for the North Sea Oceanariums’ challenges and used the Core Design Circle to rank the most important values for the innovation tracks.
Week 2
At the beginning of the second week of the workshop, we had five innovation tracks. The five innovations tracks included a collaboration between the Oceanarium and the local community, a “Klumpe-mobil” for road shows etc., a collaboration between the North Sea Oceanarium and fish dealers around Northern Jutland to hand out free children’s tickets, an Instagram competition, and an Internal Communication AI.
We had a meeting with the North Sea’s Marketing Director, Sylvia Berglund, the Marketing Coordinator & Graphic Support, Marie Louise Højer Pedersen and the PhD-fellow, Vashanth Selvadurai. During the meeting we presented our five innovation tracks, and in collaboration with the case partner, we chose to further develop the idea of an Internal Communication AI.
We and the case partners agreed that this would be the best idea for a concept, as this was what both we and they saw as the innovation track that would benefit the Oceanarium the most. We found that it was important to first work on the internal communication before starting to work more in depth with the external communication.
The case partner expressed that they found that some of the qualities they saw as most important for the Internal Communication AI was for it to be anonymous and immediate, in that the employees would be able to submit their ideas, frustrations, problems etc. as they arose.
During the following days we used video-sketching to develop five different videos showing five different variations of the concept of an Internal Communication AI. The five videos experimented with five different tools and methods of creating videos, and this helped us to figure out which tools methods would make most sense in terms of creating our final concept video. The five videos can be seen further down on this page.
On Thursday, we had a critique session with one of the other groups that was working with a different case. During the critique session, the opposite group gave us some great feedback, including that they also found it important for the Internal Communication AI to be anonymous, and that they also thought that there should be a certain time during the day when the employees had to submit their thoughts, ideas etc. to the AI, to ensure good use of the AI. They also gave us pointers on our different videos, the most important being that a voiceover greatly helped the understanding of the videos. Following that we convened and discussed the ins and outs of our final video, considering the feedback we had received.
The final day of the second week was spent entirely on planning and creating our final video, combining techniques from our videosketches and then some.
Our video for the final concept is an illustrated journey that takes the viewer from start to finish, through the use of sped up footage, clips edited into frame, and a healthy use of green screen editing to make use of different backgrounds that will make an illusion of the group having recorded interviews in many locations, and to give visuals to problem explanations.
Concept sketches
The Employee of the Month concept
The sketch illustrates a program where the employees at the North Sea Oceanarium can come up with, share and get rewarded for their ideas for improvements of the North Sea Oceanarium. The ideas will be shared anonymously, in order to ensure that every idea is rated equally and without preconceptions. All staff can then use the program to rate the different ideas on a scale of 1-5 stars. The employee with the best rated idea at the end of the month will then be named as Employee of the Month, and will be rewarded with a price.
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6KLPJj_mCA”]
The Anonymous Database Concept
The video sketch illustrates a database where the employees at the North Sea Oceanarium can share everything anonymously eg. ideas, observations, constructive criticism, suggestions for development of exhibitions and feelings. The ideas etc. will then be categorized in the database and a report will be compiled. The report will then be discussed at the coordination meetings between the different department heads, and a newsletter with the results will be sent out to all staff at the North Sea Oceanarium.
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0vPSVsejnA”]
AI Concept
The video sketch illustrates how the interface of an AI program will work. It illustrates how the AI can assist employees at the North Sea Oceanarium with finding information, planning of meetings, sharing ideas, sharing observations and problems, dealing with frustrations and problems, etc. The idea is that the AI will be able to compile and identify the employees’ concerns, ideas, observations, etc. and then distribute the information that is useful and relevant for the different departments or employees.
Idea Touch Table Concept
The video sketch illustrates how the employees ideas and proposals is assembled during the lunch break, where the ideas and proposals becomes visible on a pro multi touch table, named the Idea Touch Table. The point of the concept is that it becomes informal and casual to share thoughts regardless of your position at the North Sea Oceanarium.
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOw5OBZtHXc”]
Organisation Overview
The video sketch illustrates shortly an overview of how the structure of the North Sea Oceanariums current communication flow works, into how the departments and employees of the Oceanarium are on the same level, with the assumption that the AI communication strategy is implemented.
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6K0XLv1Mqs”]