From the ground up
The problem
Many environments prioritise efficiency over human experience, resulting in spaces that feel impersonal and disengaging. This limits meaningful interaction and can create a sense of disconnection from the spaces people move through.
The solution
In response, we created an interactive digital city exhibition that reimagines a more sustainable future for housing. Users make lifestyle choices and instantly see their impact within a shared environment, showing how individual actions can shape a more affordable, sustainable, and wellbeing-focused future for Auckland.
*Motion done by Katie
Context + key insights
We identified three key challenges around sustainability: people feel hopeless, unsure if their actions matter, and overwhelmed by fear-based messaging. As a result, many disengage revealing a need for sustainability to feel more accessible, empowering, and hopeful.
Target audience
Aucklanders aged 18–25 navigating unstable and unaffordable housing. Many are students facing relocation, flatting pressures, and insecure rentals, while seeking stability, community, and a sense of future possibility.
I led the design and development of the exhibition's interactive experience, including the user journey, questionnaire flow, and coded survey system. Using Figma alongside front-end and back-end development, I translated user choices into personalised outcomes that contributed to the shared digital city while helping create a cohesive overall experience.
Ideation process
Iterations of interface
Design decisions were informed by user testing, which was done throughout the process multiple times, along with secondary research
Final coded interface back end and front end functioning.
Responsive percentages and housing model archetype based on users responses to quiz
Along with user testing the questionnaire, doing a mock layout of the exhibition space and user testing the experience was also important to understand how someone would interact with the space, and if they would comprehend the steps to take as we had planned for it
Impact
This exhibition aims to shift sustainability from something overwhelming and abstract into something personal, collaborative, and achievable. By allowing participants to actively shape a shared future city, the experience encourages young people to feel empowered in their ability to influence more sustainable and community-focused ways of living.
Actual exhibition space - held in silo park
