Rip Current Challenge

The Rip Current Challenge Campaign is a strategic initiative aimed at boosting public safety and awareness about rip currents, targeting high risk users, Australian males aged 15 to 39. This group forms a substantial segment of the beach-going population and plays a key role in addressing the challenges associated with rip current safety awareness and identification.

Re-Brief
We are taking a risk based approach to make the highest impact.

was used by the client to describe these beach users and this has really influenced our thinking.

What we herd:
Future on-sand rip current safety education efforts should be designed to overcome the limitations of static signage.

Static signs have limited effectiveness in attracting attention and poor translation to dynamic rip hazards.

Some signs are designed to educate how rips work, how to spot rips and what to do if caught in a rip.

Signs at access points to beaches generally warn the public of the presence of rip hazards.

There is a need to improve the public ability to correctly identify rip currents when visiting the beach.

Design principles

Efficiency: Risk based approach for highest impact
SLSA affordability: Practical for SLSA to implement and within typical budgets
Keep it short and simple: a visit to the beach is about fun. Deliver short, high impact content

User centred design

Empathy: understanding what high risk beach users want from their beach visit. fun,social, relax, What do they value about their beach visit?
Communication: how do high risk beach users communicate?
Attractive: the solution will intuitively attract the high risk beach users. Engaging, interesting, interactive, educational

How Might We

Attract high risk beach users to consume and remember key rip safety messages?

Approach

We unpack the brief and diverge, selecting the double diamond method as our project's design approach. We then expand to conduct both online and offline research. After extensive studies, we identify insights and converge by synthesising user needs and problems and summarising personas. During the ideation stage, we diverge again, using the worst possible idea technique for brainstorming. Subsequently, we evaluate and refine concepts. Through group feedback, we repeatedly iterate on the idea.

About Rip Current Challenge
The campaign is organised around two core activities:

#Finding Challenge# - social media challenge

#Sports Challenge# - a physical quiz beach tent at Bondi beach.

These activities have been designed to attract high risk beach users and associate rip identification skills with a memorable beach experience and a beach themed food reward.

Event Duration

The Rip Current Challenge is a 20 week campaign through the peak of the Australian summer when beach activity is at its highest.

Target Audience

This campaign targets Australian males aged 15 to 39, aiming to engage them in both educational and recreational activities focused on rip current safety.

Goal

The campaign will be delivered through a coordinated effort involving live events, online engagement, and the strategic use of digital and physical promotional materials to maximise reach and impact.

# Finding challenge

Event Location: Online across any social media platform using the hashtag #findripcurrent

Timing: Runs continuously throughout the 20-week event duration

Activities: Participants are encouraged to share photos of rip currents they find at the beach on social media using the #findripcurrent hashtag. SLS staff will review these posts to confirm the accuracy of rip current identification. Successful participants will receive a free burger coupon from Betty's Burgers

Objectives: To improve participants' ability to recognise rip currents in a real-world setting rather than from static images, thus adapting learning to dynamic beach environments. Also, this activity aims to enhance participants’ understanding and awareness of beach safety through social media engagement, offering incentives while increasing public knowledge about rip currents

# Sports challenge

Event Location: Physical onsite event held at Bondi Beach inside a SLS Tent

Timing: Once per weekend or phblic holidays throughout the 20 week event duration where there is favourable beach conditions.

Activities: The Sports-Quiz Challenge combines a Soccer kicking game with quiz about rip currents. Participants are given two attempts to kick a ball, Correct answers are rewarded with free ice cream, while missed kick or incorrect answers lead to elimination.

Objectives: To engage beachgoers in an interactive and enjoyable way, this challenge encourages beachgoers to participate in a fun sports game while educating them about rip currents, aiming to enhance awareness and knowledge of beach safety

# Supporting tool： Interface about rip current page in ‘beachsafe’ app

The app page serves as a comprehensive resource for learning about rip currents, enriched with in-depth content on the topic.

Redesign: The app’s interface has been revamped to boost user engagement and functionality, making it an interactive tool for users to deepen their knowledge of rip current safety. This redesign includes a new section dedicated to the campaign's activities and an interactive quiz to assess rip safety knowledge.

Objectives: To establish itself as the leading source of information on rip currents and to offer users a platform to test and improve their understanding of rip current safety. By enhancing the 'Beachsafe' app interface, we aim to improve the user experience, making it a more effective support tool for this campaign and promoting the SLS app as a key resource for rip current education and safety awareness.

Reflection

This campaign provided a solution to the problem of identifying rip currents on the beach through strategic intervention and interactive design. By offering rewards, we incentivized high-risk beach users to actively participate in learning, enhancing the fun and memorability of the experience. We used dynamic and interactive content instead of static images, making the learning process more practical. Through weekend activities and ongoing online challenges, we extended user engagement and spread rip current safety knowledge via social media, turning rip current identification into a social topic.

For me, as an interaction designer, collaborating with strategy design students for the first time was a valuable learning experience. Through extensive field research and preliminary investigations with team members, we understood the users' needs and the key issues. We gathered primary data from the target audience and clients, which helped us lay a solid foundation for the project's initial stages, making subsequent design and implementation more targeted and effective. Throughout the process, we continuously tested and iterated ideas to innovate, which not only improved our efficiency but also ensured that our designs could quickly adapt and meet user needs.

In this project, I was mainly responsible for the visual design. By working closely with the team, I continually improved and optimized the design, ensuring that the final visual effects were both beautiful and highly functional and user-friendly. This collaboration taught me how to communicate and cooperate effectively in a multidisciplinary team, integrating various opinions and expertise to create a more comprehensive and effective design solution.

How Might We

Attract high risk beach users to consume and remember key rip safety messages?