A digital platform to get kids coding with Code Club Australia and Telstra Foundation
The challenge
Code Club Australia, part of the Telstra Foundation, invests in the changemakers of tomorrow with free resources and training to help #getkidscoding.
Code Club Australia relies on their volunteer base to mentor and support young people — engaging over 165,000 kids nationwide — through pioneering digital inclusion.
Impact opportunity
Today were engaged to design and build a digital platform that could maintain and grow the coding community by delivering an informative and dynamic user experience, and reducing administration overheads from outdated back-end systems.
The process
Discovery
We began our journey by defining two key objectives to guide our efforts to improve the experience of Code Club’s lifeblood, the volunteers.
Volunteer retention: Besides hosting many of the 2,300 existing clubs, volunteers function as ambassadors; helping engage more people through word of mouth in their communities. We planned to nurture the volunteers by building a real sense of pride in the difference they make directly, but also as part of something much bigger.
Club growth: Our efforts on this project support growth, by providing better guidance and support for particular types of users. The digital tools we designed allow for more personalised and relevant communication, at scale.
Experience strategy
We developed a strategy piece to surface knowledge within the Code Club team and to help prioritise audiences and experiences. Within this strategy we reviewed the existing experience flow, developed an ideal state, and developed a monitoring and evaluation framework.
Experience design
We mapped user flows, and completed an audience analysis and analytics review before building experience prototypes. We co-designed our experience prototypes with users through one-on-one remote interviews.
This provided a great opportunity to test assumptions and learn more about the volunteers’ needs, drivers and barriers.
Interaction design and content
We took core elements of the existing international Code Club brand and adapted them to give Code Club Australia its’ own voice, while maintaining a clear relationship to the broader franchise.
Collaborating closely with the client, we developed landing pages for each core use case (parents, teachers, volunteers, librarians) that spoke specifically to their drivers and provided solutions to barriers, such as linking out to a ‘week by week’ blog post on what to expect, written by a current volunteer.
Website build and platform set up
We completed a front-end and back-end build, including the development of a new CMS with secure user data flows and storage.
Our team delivered exceptional interaction design, aimed specifically at enabling the client to tell an impactful story with strong CTA’s, an immersive front door, a mobile look at clubs nearby, and a simple and helpful dashboard for users.
How can we build a platform that fosters digital inclusion?
Enable future skills
Digital is speeding along and it’s now an imperative that kids have these skills so that they’re worth a lot more and can stay relevant in a rapidly evolving society.
“I want them know they can be more than a telemarketer”
“It should be normalised not exclusive”
Provide fun and engagement
The kids are there by choice. They are really interested as an alternative form of entertainment that gets them learning.
“I do it so that kids have that opportunity to explore tangents and find their passion”
Personal reward
Parents are able to learn valuable skills and building connections with kids.
“The look that you get on a kid’s face when they figure something out and they see it work”
Coding an inclusive future
The growing digital divide in Australia threatens meaningful online participation and further entrenches existing disadvantages.
Code Club stands for a future in which the digital world is accessible for everybody, no matter who they are or where they live.
They use digital making as a way to introduce kids to the power and possibilities of computing, so the next generation can take advantage of digital opportunities even though their community may not have.
Communities with a high level of digital exclusion will be a particular focus for Code Club, with three specific impact objectives related to these groups:
- Increased digital inclusion of disadvantaged children and young people.
- Improved awareness of technology career pathways by disadvantaged young people.
- Improved capacity for low digital inclusion communities to host Code Clubs.
Out of all the international Code Clubs, this Australian platform caters for their audience needs and delivers a real future-proofed platform that can grow easily and beautifully over time.
It was such a rewarding project to work on — knowing we are helping to make digital more accessible to communities across the country — and serving the legends who deliver it; volunteers, who offer their time and skills to #getkidscoding.
Alex Bennett
Senior Producer at Today
The outcome
We delivered a future-proofed platform that can grow easily and beautifully over time. The new Code Club Australia website delivers a more accessible digital world to communities across the country and better serves the volunteers who make it all possible.
Our solution provides the right building blocks to prepare, run and maintain the best club experiences possible. Delivered with exceptional interaction design that speaks to the young people we want to inspire.
