Co-Design

For Great Outcomes

University of Auckland & Growing Up In NZ

— PROJECT NAME

Growing Up In New Zealand – Our Voices

— ROLES

Researcher

Facilitator

UX Designer – to plan and run testing

— DATE

Jan 2021 – September 2022

Context

“Growing Up in New Zealand” is the country’s largest longitudinal study on child development, tracking the lives of over 6,000 children born in 2009-2010. It aims to better understand childhood in New Zealand, with findings informing research, policy, and services to enhance child and family wellbeing.

In 2019, the University of Auckland launched the “Our Voices” project to modernise data collection and analysis within the study.

The Ask

As participants approached adolescence, the research team needed innovative digital and remote methods to sustain engagement, especially during pandemic-related disruptions. They sought guidance to ensure these methods were grounded in participants’ needs and insights.

My Approach

1. Discovery Planning

Designing for children fundamentally changed our approach. With 25 participants onsite for four full-day workshops, my colleague and I worked closely with Our Voices to co-create a structure that balanced engagement, focus, and play. We modelled each day around a familiar school rhythm, building in moments of unstructured interaction that allowed for richer insight gathering.

2. Co-Design Workshops

The participants were divided into 5 smaller groups, I facilitated one of these groups through the 4 days of workshopping. We gained insight on participants' preferences for things like contact, privacy, notifications, app experience, and cultural representation, gathering rich qualitative insights to inform the design.

The central question in the co-design sessions;

"How can we help the Prime Minister know whether Aotearoa New Zealand is a good place to grow up?"

Co-Design

In small groups, the participants (aged 11 / 12) explored different themes relating to their desired digital experience.

BOOKING & CONTACT

3. Insight Synthesis & Strategic Framing

After the workshops, my colleague and I led the synthesis process – identifying actionable patterns across groups and delivering a strategic report with clear UX recommendations. These insights informed both immediate design direction and longer-term product considerations, including high level journey maps for features that wouldn't be in the pilot.

Synthesis

Pulling together all of the outputs from all of the groups in co-design to find the themes and recommendations.

BOOKING & CONTACT

4. Low-Fidelity Concept Development & Testing

To mitigate risk and validate early hypotheses, we partnered with a children's educational game designer to develop a paper-based prototype. Testing this with a broader age range (11–16) helped us stress-test usability, language, and engagement strategies against future needs, as well as addressing the client’s need for longevity without repeated rebuilds.

Concept Testing

From the recommendations, I put together a paper concept and tested this with 11-16 year olds to ensure we were on the right track.

"I cannot convey my gratitude for the wisdom and creativity you’ve bought to this team. You are fabulous, your work is fabulous, and I felt awe and excitement hearing you present today." – Feedback for Maria in relation to the concept testing report.

Manisha Morar, Research Assistant, Our Voices Team

Early Wireframes

The UI designer put together some early wireframes so we could show the client as well as in the concept testing.

BOOKING & CONTACT

5. Early Digital Prototype & Usability Testing

With validated concepts, a UI designer created interactive prototypes, and I ran usability tests with participants, focusing on onboarding, avatars, mini-games, and data-sharing (potential friction points). Feedback confirmed the app was intuitive, engaging, and aligned with user expectations.

Usability Testing

When the web app was built, I ran testing with participants from co-design sessions to see if the app was usable and easy to understand but also met their expectations.

The Outcome

In collaboration with the Our Voices team and development partner Method, we launched a working web app to a pilot group for three months. Feedback from the pilot was incorporated into refinements before a wider rollout in July 2023, which ran for six months. The research team is now analysing the data collected through the platform.

I'm proud to have contributed to this project with the Growing Up in New Zealand and Our Voices teams – applying human-centered design to create a novel approach to wellbeing data collection. The resulting product not only met user needs but the in-moment insight gathered will hopefully improve what it means to be 'growing up in New Zealand' for years to come.

“What I particularly appreciated and valued in working with Merkle was the people – their confidence, warmth and willingness to engage with the ambiguity and complexity of what we were doing…The feedback we have received so far is that it is everything we were hoping for…everyone is really excited about it and it has also had some recognition on the international stage from other longitudinal studies around the world.”

Amelia Willems, Research Delivery Manager, UOA

Circulation

The Our Voices team went on to partner with Auckland Museum in 2024 to create an interactive experience to share the insights they had gathered from the launch. This focused on school experiences, support systems and societal issues and was open to the public for 3 months.

The Challenges

Collaborating with an education-focused research team like Growing Up in New Zealand brought a unique set of challenges.

- Introducing agile ways of working: The research team from Growing Up in New Zealand was unfamiliar with iterative design and delivery. I supported them by introducing high-level agile principles – clarifying expectations around cadence, iteration, and flexibility – while guiding them through a hybrid “wagile” model that balanced adaptability with defined outcomes.
- Adapting co-design for younger participants: Facilitating workshops for 11–12-year-olds required rethinking the approach. We adapted the session structure to mirror a school day, blending structured activities with playful, age-appropriate engagement to maintain focus and encourage meaningful input.
- Aligning cross-disciplinary teams: Strong communication and expectation-setting across disciplines were critical. Regular alignment enabled us to pivot when needed, maintain trust among stakeholders, and keep participant needs at the centre of the design process.

These challenges reinforced the value of facilitation, flexibility, and process leadership in designing for diverse user groups within research-heavy environments.