Our core team of three formed in 2019, after a family member had a close call with a bushfire. This was on the cusp of Australia’s worst bushfire season that ravaged the country: Black Summer.
Tired of seeing one-size-fits-all bushfire PDFs buried on emergency service websites, the team began with an ambitious mission: To help every Australian not only adapt, but thrive in a world with climate change.
Our business began in 2019, and we entered the RMIT Activator cohort in 2020 to make this vision a reality.
Since then, we have secured funding in state and federal government grants, and worked with local councils to help their communities become better climate prepared.
Today, we are an agile and responsive company that can quickly turn around projects. As passionate leaders in learning design, user experience, and science communication, we always have our finger on the pulse when it comes to how to do things in a more lean, strategic, and iterative way. We create tools that can help Australians become better prepared for climate change.
What we do that’s different
- Our projects are focused on climate-change adaptation and mitigation.
- We translate and operationalise research, bringing the latest findings onto the ground in communities.
- We are led by community needs and we build co-design into everything we do to ensure we are solving the right problems.
- Future-proofing technology is important to us and we design everything with longevity as a key principle.
Our team
Dan Steen, Danielle Teychenne, and Rachael Vorwerk break down barriers between disciplines to achieve academically robust, engaging, and accessible solutions.
We do this by bringing together three unique fields: science communication, user experience, and behavioural design.
With these skills, we work with researchers to accurately translate their work, design robust and measurable behaviour change campaigns to match, then combine these into accessible, engaging,s and easy-to-use tools.
Rachael Vorwerk is a science communicator and has been published in The Conversation, Cosmos, and CSIRO’s Double Helix magazine. In 2017 Rachael conducted research into the success of ABC’s War on Waste television series, and also works as the Science Communications Coordinator at the 7-year Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Optical Microcombs for Breakthrough Science (COMBS).
Danielle Teychenne's passion lies in behavioural design that effectively reduces barriers to positive adaptation. She’s also excited about story and play to deliver meaningful and memorable experiences. Danielle just finished a Master of Digital Learning Leadership with a minor thesis exploring how self-evacuation archetype public health policy could close the bushfire awareness-preparedness gap.
Dan Steen is an innovator and creative UX specialist who enjoys painting and making games. Dan also works for RMIT’s Centre of Education Innovation and Development as the Digital Experience and Innovation Lead. Dan has also shared his UX and Design Thinking expertise through Deakin University’s Spark Program.
