Decode Design
Keywords & Themes
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Human-Centred Design
Publication Design
Interactive
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Project Brief
Design a human-centred experience to engage DERC’s community or the wider world with the work they do. This will involve selecting a unique way to tell an aspect of the DERC story, promote their research activities, or engage with broader communities and/or internal stakeholders.
About D.E.R.C
DERC is the best known and world’s leading research center for digital ethnography. While understood as an international enterprise, it is located at and facilitated by RMIT University in Melbourne. It is well known as an academic think tank.
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DERC conducts bold digital ethnographic research, builds cutting edge models for conducting digital ethnography, and plays a strong role in defining what “digital ethnography” means in the world. The Centre wins awards, funding, and is well respected in the local RMIT community, the Australian academic community, as well as the world.
Strengths.
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Strong brand re-call, equity, and identity
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Credible reputation in the market
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Useful & relevant content
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Industry leader (Or the OG)
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Weak brand definition & brand positioning
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Untapped & under-utilised social media platforms
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Weak communication tools for the external & internal audiences
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Limited Funds
Weaknesses.
Opportunities.
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Establish a strong online presence by exploring new verticals
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Reach new customers using social media platforms
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Improve digital storytelling and increase website traffic
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Losing Social media engagement and being too slow to adapt to social media trends
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Limited and inconsistent internal communication
Threats.
Proposed Strategy
To tackle the existing challenges of budget and inconsistent communication, I propose we start adigital magazine for DERC. This magazine will cover every vertical under the DERC - Publications, Research, News, and Events. This magazine will be published monthly. Keeping in mind the existing budget constraints, initially it will launch the digital. Gradually after analysing the response and budget, this can be turned into a print publication as well.
It bridges all the verticals without changing the existing modes of communication. It will increase engagement on all platforms - Website, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Furthermore, it will force the other communication modes to step-up and maintain cohesive visual language and structure. It automatically develops and re-enforces the established brand identity. Lastly, since it is a monthly magazine, it gives the team ample amount of time to accumulate content and data for the next issue.
READERSHIP: DIGITAL VS. PRINT
Sources: Digital News Report 2018, Digital News Report 2020
Globally, the demand for news has remained strong. Print circulation has remained stable over the five years to 2018, while paying digital audiences have grown rapidly.
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Global print circulation figures remained relatively stable between 2013 and 2018, falling by just 0.5%.
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However, paid digital circulation has grown rapidly as publications deploy new payment models and content strategies. Data shows that consumers are willing to pay for digital news. Between 2013 and 2018, digital circulation volumes increased by 307% to reach 31.5 million paying subscribers.
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Across all news publications globally, between 2013 and 2018, the number of paid print subscriptions fell approximately 3 million while paid digital subscriptions increased by 26 million.
For most Australians, offline news channels – TV, radio, newspapers and others – are still their preferred method of consuming news. In 2020, 52% of Australian adults said they preferred to access news offline.
However, this is 4 percentage points lower than in 2017, as some consumers move to online alternatives such as news websites, social media and other platforms.
Digital and Print Magazine
