The Racism. It Stops With Me. campaign is a well-known campaign Australia-wide created and managed by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). The website provides tools and resources to help people and organisations learn about racism and take action to create change.
Deliverables
Digital experience
Website
Brief
The previous RISWM website was built several years ago in Drupal 7. The site needed a redesign to keep it in line with the latest technological updates and support the new strategic direction of the campaign.
The new site would not only host the new campaign creative and material, but it would also host the updated Workplace Cultural Diversity Assessment tool. Think HQ was tasked with rebuilding the website and incorporating the assessment tool to provide the Australian Human Rights Commission users and stakeholders with a single and modern point of truth when discussing and eliminating racism in Australia.
Execution
From an organisation perspective, re-engaging the AHRC audience with fresh content on a regular basis was a cornerstone in combating a systemic issue like Racism. They needed a website and CMS that offered a large degree of content management flexibility so they could rapidly adapt as new resources and stories arose. Beyond content management flexibility, the AHRC also expected to make the most of their Cultural Diversity Assessment tool which proved to be very valuable to organisations in their journey towards anti-racism. The website became an obvious destination to host the Cultural Diversity assessment engaging organisations and capturing their assessment and progress towards change.
From an audience perspective, the website is visited by diverse audience groups. While some people would be looking for guidance in dealing with specific instances of racism, others would be looking for resources and case studies to further commit to active anti-racism. More importantly, any visits to the website could be following a confronting or traumatic event. Our content needed to prioritise empathy and support and effectively direct users to the most appropriate support or action.
From a technology perspective, our main challenges were about making the best use of the Drupal 9 layout builder so we could future-proof the website and offer high-level content management flexibility. Additionally, the WCAG2.1 AA accessibility compliance offered some extra challenges when it came to selecting the most suitable Drupal module as not all modules have proven their performance on the Accessibility stage.
The design results displayed the beautiful imagery captured within the campaign bringing stories and diverse perspectives from humans of different cultural backgrounds.
Outcome
Think HQ led the project from kick-off to research, design and development. This included consulting with several stakeholders, fully auditing the AHRC’s content, working through several iterations of sitemaps and user flows, and fully designing the user experience and the user interface, including wireframes, layouts and prototypes. Our delivery sprint saw the team working in a Scrum agile methodology collaborating with the AHRC team to develop all custom component blocks while training the content managers to use the Drupal Layout Builder.
Our proposed architecture included the use of Drupal 9 core modules, open source modules/plugins, the development of custom modules plugins where required, and the development of a theme based on the approved design system, with custom styles and templates.
Our development approach fully utilised the layout builder function of Drupal 9 ensuring AHRC content managers could create new pages in the CMS with the flexibility of constructing the page layout from more than 30 custom component blocks available in the Drupal library.
The design results displayed the beautiful imagery captured within the campaign bringing stories and diverse perspectives from humans of different cultural backgrounds. The content architecture and design are synchronised to provide users with easy navigation and direct access to the appropriate resources and support they need. From usability testing to complete Accessibility compliance performed by a third-party auditor, the website has proven to be aesthetically compelling for all users and offers invaluable support and information.
One of the key functionalities of the website is the Cultural Diversity Assessment tool for organisations. The tool is comprised of approximately 50 questions measuring cultural diversity and acts as an entry point for anti-racism work. Within the tool, A portal was created for organisations to track progress from past assessments as well as bookmark resources relevant to the area of the assessment where they underperformed. Once authenticated, organisations can start the assessment, save progress and come back to it later if necessary, a step up in the tool's overall functionality.
The release of the website was coordinated with the launch of the campaign so organisations could immediately use the new tool and access valuable resources to improve their organisational approach to anti-racism. The result was a user-friendly structure and design, a fresh, clean and contemporary look and feel that is easy to navigate while maintaining Web Accessibility 2.1 Level AA compliance (tested by Accessibility expert Intopia). The Racism, It Stops With Me" Website exemplifies how a digital space can be a catalyst in creating large scale social change and combatting systemic racism.
